Yeah, there's a reason Nintendo was preaching consoles (or maybe gaming) were dying. Japan was the best/easiest example of what was happening. Too bad it seems the Wii couldn't steer this off course.

To be fair, though, unincluding the competing consoles makes it look worse than it probably is. The PS1 era had the N64 and Saturn doing decently well, but it doesn't show up on your charts.

Also, what's with the huge discrepancy in sales (with our own data) for FFX? Did it really sell that much worse than DQVIII? Barely outselling XII seems hard to imagine, too...

Well you´re right about the portable situation Scottie. I´m just biased towards consoles so I don´t want portables to get the upper hand among developers in Japan. In order for japanese developers to stay faithful to consoles maybe they have to rely more on western markets since in those consoles are huge. That was my point.

Hopefully you´re right about Wii, I´d love if it could score many more millionsellers and most likely we´ll see some more the coming year. According to Famitsu Wii still has 7 millionsellers, Super Mario Galaxy is very close (at 955 k sold) and will hopefully be able to crawl it´s way towards the millionmark in the future.

And yes you´re right, this generation does represent the biggest increase in the gaming industry in Japan IF we include handhelds. That´s for sure.

The truth is that sales in Japan is slowing.... dying it's a big,BIG word...!
The main reason for this reaction is the global crisis.We have less money, we spend less in luxury items...& I don't think that this happens only in Japan!
We must not forget that the portable consoles are cheaper.... because of this we can aesyly have them.

Yes, of course the current generation is nowhere near finished. Wii can actually still achieve huge sales. Yes it looks worse including PS3 and 360 and not the status for runner-up consoles  in previous generations, maybe that was a mistake. I just wanted to compare where the current sales were this generation, so for comparison this gen with earlier generations then compare Wii´s software sales with NES,SNES,PS1 and PS2 and keep it mind that Wii will most likely score several more millionsellers.

Very interesting. I had no idea the trend went that far back.

The recession is not the cause.  Japanese gamers aren't necessarily becoming less interested in consoles.  The reason is most likely because people are generally outdoors more than in America and Europe.

Its Japan population, its shrinking each year.

Also as the current pop ages sales will shrink.

Interesting, I thought that DS would be higher but it still have time to climb. Wow at NES and SNES though! Talk about softwareselling consoles! WII still behind N64 as well but that won´t last for long I guess with the new releases coming up.

The most striking here to me is that the consoles (NES,SNES) has still sold more software than the gigantic portables (GB and DS). NES looks unbeatable.

Interesting comparison. Considering how semi-lackluster the data is, this is very nice.

It has a few flaws though.

1. Competition.

If you look at the sales of only the top-selling console, it drops a lot. But if you include the others, you'll see that it isn't all that doomie.

I tried to find the Japanese sales of all the consoles, but this turned out hard as most the links went back here. :/

Using the VGChartz numbers, it's like this. (These are the hardware sales each gen, excluding the winning console).

3rd: ~1M
4th: ~2M (very, very rough estimate. Better numbers would be greatly appreciated)
5th: ~11M
6th: ~ 4.5M

Point is, NES & SNES were immensely dominative in Japan. The Ps1 & Ps2 weren't that so much, meaning that the drop is far from as large as you method makes it seem. I'm willing to guess that 5th gen equalled the 4th gen, and that they were both closer to the 3rd gen than the numbers make it seem.

I do believe that there was a rather large drop from 5th to 6th though, even moreso than your numbers make it appear.

2. 6th gen vs 7th gen.

Now, 6th gen was the worst gen so far in Japan. But is the 7th gen going to be any worse? Let's have a look.

The Ps2 sold ~ 230M software in Japan (http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps2soft_e.html)

After 3 years on the market, it had shipped 85M software.

The Wii has, after 2 and a half year on the market, sold 31M software. It's likely to be at around 50M when its 3 year date is here.

Of course, this is comparing shipped to sold. If we look at VGChartz' software sales for Ps2 after 3 years, it puts it at 42M. Now, this is of course pretty lacking, but it still gives a bit substance.

All in all, it looks like Wii is on track to sell roughly as much software as the Ps2, or perhaps slightly less.

Now, Ps3 + X360 is sure to outsell GC + XB. The HW difference is already at 4.1M vs 4.5M. It's probable that Ps360 should sell around 5M more, leaving it at 9M vs 4.5M in hardware. As Ps3 and X360 are really software hogs in Japan, I wouldn't be shocked if they actually sold more than double the SW of the GC+XB.

All in all, I wouldn't be shocked if 7th gen turned out bigger than 6th gen in Japan.