Many places and sites state the Japanese gaming market has been hurting stating no single console has replaced the PS2.  The other general view is that handhelds (together) have shifted to the dominating the market in Japan, but this is just inaccurate.

Basically if you look at the overall top selling games in Japan (http://www.vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?sort=Japan">sales) the top 10 best selling games are dominated by handheld games, and a lot of the top 50 are handhelds as well, but it shows that one console usually dominates in market and sales, but that race is between all consoles in Japan its not so sectioned off like in America where they seem like two different markets.

What does this mean?  That it wasn't so much of a handheld shift as they've always been there, it does go up and down like any market, as seen with the GBA (sales) which only had 5 million sellers and 23 selling more than half a million, but it must be stated that GBA's life was cut short vs other handhelds.  This also means that PSP (sales) doesn't "dominate" with DS as co-Japan rulers, PSP more or less is doing below par, with only 3 million sellers and less than 10 games selling more than a half a million.

What does this lead to? Home consoles, SNES (sales) had 29 million sellers and 64 doing more than 500k.  PS1 (sales) 33 million sellers with 79 selling more than 500k, a nice increase. PS2 (sales) with 21 million sellers (less than both SNES and NES) but 74 game selling more than 500k, still lower than PS1 but 10 more half million sellers than SNES, still a bigger decline.

Now we get to this gen (remember these are not the "final" numbers as more titles are coming), DS (sales) 33 million sellers and 61 500k sellers, which already ties PS1 in million sellers and almost as many half million sellers as SNES.  Wii (sales) with 12 million sellers but only 18 selling at least 500k, not too terribly bad for the second place console in the race.  PS3 (sales) only one million seller and six half million sellers, which is in line with the PSP's track in Japan.

Numbers don't really lie for the Japanese market, all consoles including handhelds are in the running to "win" the race, typically there is one that dominates, with another getting some nice sales, but with DS doing on par with Japan's biggest era, its obvious things aren't going down, in fact the Wii being the second place console is selling more games than the other second place consoles like GC and N64, so things could go better for Japan this gen over any other gen, and console gaming is not hurting

I'm bumping this due to Maxwell's pleading over MSN

thekitchensink said: I'm bumping this due to Maxwell's pleading over MSN

Lies! I never plead in my life I just don't want a little bit of work being wasted lol

You seem to love stealing my ideas without even mentioning my contributions! This was born of a Steam conversation between the two of us. I mention this as an excuse to bump the topic, but more because I am a glory hog.

And there's yet to be one on topic reply

Come on! Interesting data, links all given to you guys, what more do you want from me? People like baseless assumptions and wild assertions I guess

Huh, that actually makes a lot of sense... funny that the general assumption these days is that console gaming is dying in Japan. Well done Maxwell! Now go tell the rest of the interwebs!

Yeah I'll see if this could turn into an original story :P but much like this thread, not many people seem interested in facts and data, they want crazy predictions, and opinions from people that don't know dick about what they're discussing, see most sales analysts :P

Shameless bump! Also, very well researched.

The japanese market does seem to play by different rules and it seems like 1 console, be it a handhelp or home console, gets appointed the "winner" early on.

You know, Japan is an incredible testing area for technology. The are further away advanced than us about technology. Japanese also love compact things, which explain the success of the DS and PSP system despite Wii and PS3 have pretty decent sales.

Handheld technology is Japanese's favorite.

What's Japan? That's somewhere east of America right?