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Forums - Sales Discussion - Japan as a "region" on VGC?

Lostplanet22 on 26 December 2009
theprof00 said:
Lostplanet22 said:
theprof00 said:
Lostplanet22 said:
theprof00 said:
Demotruk said:
Lostplanet22 said:
Demotruk said:

No, Japan is the only signifigant market for games in Asia. Korea may get there eventually, but right now it's not important enough. USA is part of the same market as Canada, which has similar trends and is operated by the same divisions of the big three. The UK only differs a little from the rest of the EU market as it's English speaking and more culturally influenced by the US. It's less distinct when you include the other English speaking sections of 'others', Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

What?

China's  game market is reported to hit 41 billion yuan ($6 billion USD) in 2010.

How much is that in Japan right now?   But hey I forgive you because this is a console sales site chartz.

Well, you know the context we're talking about, as you acknowledge it yourself.

Just to comment on China....it's probably one of the hardest regions to track sales in, not only because piracy is rampant, but because the places that sell the consoles don't really go through any official avenues.

I can imagine that one store might order psps from Sony distributors, and then another store orders from that store, and then another store trades tvs for the psps, and then another store buys all those and mods them...etc etc. How do you track any of that? The only way would be to find out the sales of sony distributors, or sony itself, which we aren't privvy to unless sony comes out and tells everyone what they sold.

Consoles are not popular anyway. Sony probably sold more PSP's in Sweden/finland/Belgium/switzerland just saying how small the market is. Well what you want 'my nephew paid 45$ for a  abonnement that let him play any PC game at his local internet shop for a whole year'  It is a bit like the new console they want to release in NA/EU that let you play a lot of games for free with only a monthly/annual charge (forgot the name damned it).

I went to Thailand once, and there are literally malls filled with pirated material.

The funny thing is, they sold the copied ones right next to the legitimate copies..

So like, when I went there, the Sims had just launched. I went to the mall to pick it up and there was an obvious copy which included a bunch of other sim games as well as the Sims, SimAnt, SimTower, SimCity etc etc. Right next to the CD envelope was a boxed retail Sims game, for like, 3 dollars more. The copy was 3$, the retail was 5$....something like that. I also bought 40 Dreamcast games for 10$.

I can't imagine China being any more legitimate about software than Thailand.

Hey I am for sure not saying China is more legitimate about software than Thailand.  Prices of games are way to high (atleast for now) for 99,9% of customers.

I'm not arguing, just chatting about china. I didn't mention it, but in Thailand, the difference between 3$ and 5$, was more comparitively a difference of 30$ and 50$ for the average Thai citizen. The dollar translates very well to the Thai Baht, but it doesn't mean things are actually that much cheaper for them. Just like China, the average person can barely afford food and shelter.

We are going off topic. I prefer this discussion to continue on our wall if you don't mind.



 

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outlawauron on 26 December 2009
kowenicki said:
so we keep japan purely for the reason of the buying habits...

despite the size of the market?

What? They're the 2nd largest market in the world to the US?

No other country outside of US and Japan can do something crazy like have games sell over 2 million in a week. The UK has not been able to do that.



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invetedlotus123 on 26 December 2009
Lostplanet22 said:
theprof00 said:
Lostplanet22 said:
theprof00 said:
Lostplanet22 said:
theprof00 said:
Demotruk said:
Lostplanet22 said:
Demotruk said:

No, Japan is the only signifigant market for games in Asia. Korea may get there eventually, but right now it's not important enough. USA is part of the same market as Canada, which has similar trends and is operated by the same divisions of the big three. The UK only differs a little from the rest of the EU market as it's English speaking and more culturally influenced by the US. It's less distinct when you include the other English speaking sections of 'others', Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

What?

China's  game market is reported to hit 41 billion yuan ($6 billion USD) in 2010.

How much is that in Japan right now?   But hey I forgive you because this is a console sales site chartz.

Well, you know the context we're talking about, as you acknowledge it yourself.

Just to comment on China....it's probably one of the hardest regions to track sales in, not only because piracy is rampant, but because the places that sell the consoles don't really go through any official avenues.

I can imagine that one store might order psps from Sony distributors, and then another store orders from that store, and then another store trades tvs for the psps, and then another store buys all those and mods them...etc etc. How do you track any of that? The only way would be to find out the sales of sony distributors, or sony itself, which we aren't privvy to unless sony comes out and tells everyone what they sold.

Consoles are not popular anyway. Sony probably sold more PSP's in Sweden/finland/Belgium/switzerland just saying how small the market is. Well what you want 'my nephew paid 45$ for a  abonnement that let him play any PC game at his local internet shop for a whole year'  It is a bit like the new console they want to release in NA/EU that let you play a lot of games for free with only a monthly/annual charge (forgot the name damned it).

I went to Thailand once, and there are literally malls filled with pirated material.

The funny thing is, they sold the copied ones right next to the legitimate copies..

So like, when I went there, the Sims had just launched. I went to the mall to pick it up and there was an obvious copy which included a bunch of other sim games as well as the Sims, SimAnt, SimTower, SimCity etc etc. Right next to the CD envelope was a boxed retail Sims game, for like, 3 dollars more. The copy was 3$, the retail was 5$....something like that. I also bought 40 Dreamcast games for 10$.

I can't imagine China being any more legitimate about software than Thailand.

Hey I am for sure not saying China is more legitimate about software than Thailand.  Prices of games are way to high (atleast for now) for 99,9% of customers.

I'm not arguing, just chatting about china. I didn't mention it, but in Thailand, the difference between 3$ and 5$, was more comparitively a difference of 30$ and 50$ for the average Thai citizen. The dollar translates very well to the Thai Baht, but it doesn't mean things are actually that much cheaper for them. Just like China, the average person can barely afford food and shelter.

We are going off topic. I prefer this discussion to continue on our wall if you don't mind.

I would like to participate as well! If games are so expensive how you're able to buy pc components?



Pineapple on 26 December 2009

As few people actually replied to the OP, I'll give that a shot.

 

I think you're making a vital error. What really counts isn't the absolute size, but the difference the market has from the rest of the world. Japan has a unique interest in games, and that's why it deserves to be counted as an unique market.

 

The UK's interest in games is very close to the one of the rest of Europe, as well as Americas. Japan, on the other hand, has a completely unique taste in games. Games can sell near a million there, and fail to sell 100K in the rest of the World.

 

Essentially: The absolute size isn't what's relevant, but rather the relative drop-off from the norm.



DaBuddahN on 26 December 2009
ioi said:
The regions are chosen to fall in line with financial reports - things have always been Japan, Americas and Others, shipment data for games and hardware is split into those regions and it makes sense to follow the same convention.

That aside, as many have mentioned these 3 regions make sense based on buying habits. Japan is really an entity of its own, US has very similar release dates and sales patterns to Canada, Mexico etc so it makes sense to group those regions together at the Americas. Others is obviously different, I can see why people may feel that we can split things down which is why we do with hardware and hardware trends can be used to estimate software breakdowns if you so wish. It is already an enormous amount of work to to seperate charts for 3 regions so it is highly unlikely that we will start breaking Others software up into sub-regions anytime soon - it is just too much work.

This should have ended this thread...



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DaBuddahN on 26 December 2009
kowenicki said:
hatmoza said:
Out of curiosity Kowenicki, what are PS3 Vs 360 sales in the UK alone?

OT I like it the way it is. Three is a charm ^_^ and honestly, I think it would just be more fuel for the console wars on ze forums. Breaking down sales to more regions or categories is not going to help your future arguments which is why I ask that question, so it wasn't curiosity - more like "I see what you did there."


whatever

fact is UK is just as important as japan imo.  and europe is farrr more important.

.... Wut? 



BigBoobieHead on 27 December 2009
ioi said:

Well I'm still not sure what your crusade here is?

At the end of the day, Japan is totally unique. It has it's own games, own buying habits and has for many years been seen as one of the focal points of gaming. Two of the big 3 manufacturers are based there and it is second only to the US in terms of yearly revenue.

Now I know you never said to get rid of Japan, as such (although you hint at it and it is what your thread title suggests), but why would you want to seperate UK from Europe? It seems totally pointless - on the whole, Europe has much the same buying trends as the UK and indeed for most games (with some notable exceptions) you can pretty much take UK sales and scale by the UK:Europe hardware ratios to get the sales in the other European countries. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to seperate the UK from Europe just because it is getting closer and closer to Japan in terms of absolute yearly revenues.

It has been explained by myself and others that the splits are partly down to historical reasons, partly down to simplicity, and partly down to the most obvious way to split things in terms of game / hardware release dates, buying habits and ease of comparison to financial reports and other tracking services.

I agree that people shouldn't necessarily get personal but there is no logical reason to want to split the UK up and even less reason to remove Japan or combine it with another region.

The more divided segments we have on the first page, the more accurate and analysable the data will be at first glance. I know you can click on others and see the UK specifics, but this is the internet, people are lazy. I also know that this would be far too much work to do with the software aswell, so Im not sure how it would work doing software and hardware divided differently. So there is logic Imo......I think it would be better to have North America, Europe (ex Uk), UK, Japan and Others as segments but im fine with the way it is atm.



Chrizum on 27 December 2009

I would like the split:

North America
Europe
Asia
Others



Hus on 27 December 2009
kowenicki said:

 

Thoughts?

Japan can be tracked better then any other market, it deserves its to be on its own.

And this has nothing to do with the fact your beloved 360 is geting wrecked in Japan while doing really well in uk.



hunter_alien on 27 December 2009

Yeah... maybe if the staff would have like 5 more full time workers, and tons of extra time. IMO its a pretty good way to measure sales, and I doubt that ioi would chnage it anytime soon. Also, think about all the changes the site should go trough...



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