Very true, but the Report should have mention the overall downward trend of the market, rather than just point out the common casual vs core buying trends to back up the decline in sales.

That is true. I think some of the argumentation of the journalist can be argued, I don't think the general conclusion should be however.
You should not expect Nintendo to become again the second biggest valuation in the Nikkei in the future... Personally I feel it belongs more in the 10-15 ranking....( especially with the extreme cyclicity of the gaming business)

All the more reason they should look at the big picture, rather than picking at details and using misleading metrics. Japan is the only market the Wii looks weak in, and it's the market with the weakest growth in video gaming.

The Wii's weakness in Japan is almost entirely due to a lack of releases. Of the five I mention, Mario Tennis is the only 2009 release, while 4/5 non-Wii titles in the top ten are 2009 releases. Given how software-dependant the Japanese market appears to be, the article is neglects to notice that major Japanese third party franchises like Tales, Monster Hunter, and Dragon Quest are now shifting to the Wii, bolstering Nintendo's highly successful first party offerings.

I thought the anecdotal evidence showed the state of japanese games market pretty well. People moving from home consoles to handheld ones.

Is Wii Sports bundled in Japan too these days, or did the article just jump to west and was the attach rate WW or japanese? It could have been a little more specific.

The decline in Japan is a fact, but i think the article made a few misconseptions. The decline in Japan is due to people moving to handhelds, and i'm having hard time to see the same thing happening in west, since here we have a lot more room to grow, or a lot more people to buy different devices.

Then again, the article ignored upcoming software that may have a lot to do with sales this year. Although, as Ail said, it's quite hard to top MKWii, but we'll see what the Motion Plus can do. Maybe it's a bit too early to call this year out yet.

@Avarice: Lack of polish is something you can't blame Wii Music of. It's very polished game. The games problem lies in its songs. Although there's plenty of them, they range too much from one end to another, when there a few good songs to everyone, but not much more for individual. I wouldn't be surprised if we'd see something like "Wii Music Pop", "Wii Music Rock" or a Nintendo game music themed Wii Music, would be a great idea, that would definately sell lots of copies even if the size of the songlist would be half of Wii Music list (but as a specialised list it would have more content for people who like the kind of music). If Wii Music had the songlist of Brawl, the game would already rival Wii Fit and MKWii.

Nintendo doesn't need to worry. They have very smart people working for them(Like every big company) that have solutions for all of this. This article also doesn't look at the full picture. Nicely written anyway though, but it's only half or less true imo.

Wii Fit was selling the Wii in Japan for months, but now that is faltering, and Wii sales are weak.

Also interesting how low the attach rate is for Wii Sports compared to the weekly Wii Sales.

The Wii got outsold in one territory for two months, during a software drought and some huge games for the competition. Stop the presses!

Do journalists to their research for their writing anymore?

This sort of financial newspaper tends to trust whatever they gather from analysts.

We all know how much of a clue professional analysts generally have about the video games market.