The only issue with that is the larger audience they are now appealing to is probably the one most likely to reduce spending on games ect if they start to feel the financial sqeeze as opposed to the playstation demographic for example. Although aiming for the family/older market allows them to put out a less 'powerful' machine whilst still being appealing, allowing them to keep their price lower which is obviously beneficial in difficult financial times. For a pure gaming perspective then Nintendo have clearly got their strategy right so far but I don't think it's quite so easy for Sony who are looking at their business in a much larger picture.

The industry is recession-resilient (not recession proof, though), so i imagine it could also be meltdown-resilient.

Japan needs to clearly ban contraceptives of any kind :) As for the strengthening yen.. its kinda gotta do more with high fuel prices/gold and a weaking dollar...Japan's near stagnant population doesnt really help things much more..

From a gaming point of view.. Japanese companies are already starting to cater to more western tastes( hence games like FF going multiplat), the hardest to fall are often the weakest.. I guess we'll be seeing a lot of layoffs/mergers in the years to come.. console gaming is already a dying breed in japan, with stuff like tegra2 and a possible DS HD coming out in the near future- handheld gaming would be the bread and butter of japanese companies. Death to creative projects and more casual games in the future..

The ethos isn't changing so much as the government is doing everything it can to get Japanese people to spend their savings, in order to 'stimulate' the economy.

But if they spend their savings, the government has to find someone else to borrow from, or outright print money to fund their massive deficit.

The dimension of their gov. deficit is staggering. They're spending more than twice their tax revenue. That's right, more than half their budget is funded by borrowing:

http://www.hedgehogs.net/pg/newsfeeds/hhwebadmin/item/1782144/hatoyama-proposes-record-japan-budget-for-2010-deepening-deficit-concern

Then again, printing might just be what they need... they get to fund their budget and devalue the currency to help exporters at the same time. As long as it doesn't result in hyperinflation of course.

ATLUS :(

@ Kowenicki do you have a better link to the SGresearch article? It's broken.

I'm still surprised at how few Japanese publishers have closed this gen considering global economic meltdown and what's been going down in the western development communities. By my count it's just two minor ones, Telent (who was already reduced to making cellphone/porn games) and Seta (who's last big project was subcontracting for Project Sylpheed). Actually, more JP publishers have gotten into gaming than out of it this generation.

Of course, there have also been a lot of notable JP publisher mergers (Square Enix, Namco Bandai, Takara Tomy, Sega Sammy, Koei Tecmo) and a few buyouts (Taito, D3P, Jaleco) too.