Japan should have its own category simply for the fact that it's still an important market for software.

As an example, the United Kingdom is fairly similar in gaming tastes to the United States. Yeah, UK customers buy some different games in different amounts compared to the U.S. market, but they're generally similar. Japan's taste in games are so vastly different from America and Others, and the rest of the world in general, that they deserve their own weekly chart. Also, you're still proving the point that Japan sells more hardware than the UK.

The main reason Japan has its own weekly chart is not just its software diversity (games that sell well in Japan often don't sell amazingly in the rest of the world), but its sheer ability to sell software. This generation, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl sold about 6 million copies in Japan. And unless my memory's fuzzy, no game has ever sold close to 6 million in the UK, this generation or not. And the USA isn't considered a separate market because it's easier to lump it in with the rest of the Americas. Why keeps those regions separate when their sales are so low? Breaking down the charts into more regions and more countries will just make work harder for the numbers team, and is frankly very unnecessary.

Of course it is. Starcraft is a national sport in Korea, while in contrast the PC market in Japan is almost non-existant except for visual novels. I don't think any country has the trends Japan has

I think a major reason is that Sony, Nintendo and I think MS as well all class it as a region.

Nintendo uses Japan and "overseas" (which it splits into Americas and "others"... and "others" also sometimes has the big 5 European countries split from it as a "Europe" region)

Sony uses Japan, Americas, EU+Aus and Asia

Me and the other Austrian PS3 gamer talked and decided we want to be a separate Region too! We are going to ask the Xbox guy tomorrow for his opinion!

1. Japan is Japan.

Only out of respect for this mother-of-console-gaming-country we should already have a separate sales chart for them.

2. There are no clear sales figures for other Asian countries, so an 'Asia-chart' would be meaningless, 'cause it would be made up out of Japan sales.



For me it's still not clear what the countries making up Others excluding the EU and Australia are.

But as long as the Other- and Australia-part of the Others-sales is not a major part of the total Others sales, you might as well keep Others together (EU+Australia+Other).

We would get a far more accurate look on things with this idea at first glance (I know you can look at the country specifics but who can be bothered? It would be much better with them there on the front page imo), I dont see why people are so against it.

Plus, I think the markets people are most interested in should be included, and the markets that most are interested in are in the OP's idea.

edit - and it cud lead to a lot more discussion points in sales sites and for the forums in general.

Markets are not always defined by national borders. Canada is basically the same market as the US, Ireland is basically the same market as the UK, etc. Japan is separate because it's highly distinct, which is the same reason the big three treat it as a separate market.

America (North south)
EU
AS (asia)
others (which would be south africa and australia plus neighbors)

This would make perfect sense

For once I agree with  roll. What is the world coming to!

I like the site and how the regions are as it is. There's no need to change them.