Koweniki is right!

Why does Japan get a god given right to have a region wheras no other country gets that. Japan isn't the power in gaming it once was, it is becoming by the day more worthless. I can't believe people have completley dismised his ideas. If i was ioi i would set it out like so:

N.A - fairly straight forward, USA and Canada (Mexico?)

Europe - All the countries located within Europe

Asia - Japan China Saudi Phillipines Indonesia

Other - Africa Australasia South America

With "other" all that ioi has stated really, small markets that arn't significent, but these regions i think would be more appropriate instead of giving Japan a full section. Also, there are a number of countires which have decent sized market. Australia, Brazil and Egypt. On top of that the total of all the other regions within such as Argentina, South Africa, West Indies and New Zealand wil provide an interesting reflection on the so called Less developed countries market towards video games.

The irony ...

Japan have tons of exclusive releases, franchises that are only succesful there(everyone knows), have lots of million sellers and the best selling game sold 10 million while UK best selling game sold 3 million,many WW franchises have near 1/3 of the sales from that regions and near 1/2 of income duo to higher price, have tons of developers that work only in that regions, have genres that only exists there(like date sims) and go on.

Japan is in decline but is still a key market. Putting all the mainland asia together and comparing to Japan only we will see that Japan alone is still have a pretty high % when it comes to consoles.

lol

you've got to be joking

Your solution is a geographic division, but the problem is that markets are not defined just by geography. It's an element, alright, but there's much more to it than that. None of the companies consider Japan and Korea to be in the same market, not just because one is much bigger than the other (revenue-wise), but because the sales trends are dramatically different. Success in Japan is not a good indicator of success in Korea, and vice-versa. On the other hand, success in Australia usually means likely success in New Zealand, UK->Ireland, USA->Canada, aside from the occassional national sport. Even with all the differences within the massive Western market, the differences are much starker with Japan which is very clearly it's own independent market. Games are usually divided by the West and Japan, with only the occasional further divide in the West.

Also, doesn't Japan typically get its own release dates? Doesn't that also make Japan a fairly distinct market?

As Koweniki previously stated, Japan despite a massive population in comparison to the UK is failing in terms of home console sales which is the bulk of this sites origins. Obviously you know that Japan isn't bigger region than America? Right? Ok im sorry for presuming that you are aware of the size of Japan. Here is a world Map for your convinience:

Here is a website for console sales and you can go to Japan and see how low things are in comparison to the USA and Proportinally to the UK.

www.vgchartz.com

And finally here is a site which can give you world population to see how poorly Japan is performing considering its the "GOD" of gaming and that its so much greater than every other country

www.google.com

Let me put it blunty:

no one anticipates any UK-releases, besides the British.

But we do look forward to many game-releases and their related sales in NA, Japan or the EU as a whole.

Like the release of Pro Evolution last month in Europe, or last week FFXIII in Japan.
Just like I'm looking forward, saleswise, to the release of GT5 and FFXIII in Europe, not the UK specifically.

It might be hard to hear, but no one cares about specific UK sales besides you guys.
People care about European sales.



Some figures:

The UK 360 sales make up 31% of the total Others sales for the X360.
The UK PSP sales make up 17% of the total Others sales for the PSP.

So even UK's so popular 360 doesn't even make up 1/3 of the 360 totals.

Really no point in putting that stuff on the front page.

@Ajax : I agree. I absolutely don't care about the UK sales or releases, while I care about Japan.

It may be because Japanese games are great and numerous, or because it's a very different market in its own.

After further analysis, I've decided that Russia needs its own front page chart.

And Antarctica.