It seems to me that the only IP this year that could really boost PS3 in Japan for an extended period of time (3+ weeks) is Metal Gear Solid 4. But, look at MGS3 sales - on a much larger userbase in Japan, it sold just over 100,000 copies. Granted MGS, and MGS2 (on PS and PS2), were both huge games in Japan. But even these games never sold over 1 million copies, on platforms with much healthier hardware sales than PS3. I suppose a new hit could come out of nowhere...Heavenly Sword maybe? GTA actually sells fairly well in Japan...but it won't move hardware... I doubt FF will come out this year for PS3. If the hardware base is too small, I expect it will be ported or moved anyway... So my question is...At what point is the PS3 officially at the point of no return in Japan (as in the point at which it can't come back and massacre the Wii)? Sony needs a huge boost at some point, because Super Paper Mario, Brain Academy, Mario, Brawl are all huge...and thats without considering Wii Play & Wii Sports as killer apps...

i've said this before and i'll say it again. Sony has no chance unless DQ 10 comes out for ps3. If DQ 10 is announced for Wii PS3 has 0% chance.

The only problem is that the upcoming games list for PS3 looks as bad, if not worse, than it did for Wii post-christmas. 2 games from now 'till June supposedly, and of the 2 June games, only 1 looks like a potential decent seller from what's been said of it. The PS3 schedule beyond June is to erratic to count for. Let's assume Square decides to be nice to Sony and puts DQ10 on PS3. Let's say it sells as many as previous games in the series, at what, 4 million? By the time it comes out, which would be 2009 at earliest, the Wii would be so far ahead of the PS3's install base it wouldn't be funny. The PS3 needs a stream of good games, and for the next 3-4 months it's not gonna get it. How much farther ahead will that put the Wii during that time frame? Even if Final Fantasy XIII comes out in Q4 '07, the Wii may have between 1.5 and 3 million install base advantage by then.

Metal Gear Solid 3 sold 812,000 copies in Japan. And I highly doubt Dragon Quest 10 would come out on the PS3. Why would it? Besides, It's going to be some time before that game comes out, regardless of the platform (which will be either the DS or Wii), since they still haven't released 9 on the DS yet.

Shit I used the MGS3 data for Subsistence not Snake Eater...my bad Still, PS3 won't have a game sell that well in Japan for months yet based on the hardware sales.

Actually, comparing 78k to 20k, it's almost 4:1.

Not this year. MGS4 is non-factor in Japan, it will sell alot of games but not move systems significantly. See Gundam Musou. As for FFXIII, I agree, it will either be moved or SE will add a subtitle on the current PS3 project and consider it a spin off. They will then announce a new FFXIII Wii game and call it the main game.

I am looking forward to seeing whether the wii hardware sales numbers increase in Japan for April... if the so called ramp up in production happens, can the Wii sell at the same rate as the DS?? Will it start to hit over 100,000 a week? The next few weeks will be very telling for Sony, especially once Super Paper Mario comes out. Again and again everything I look at makes me understand just how different the Japanese market is to America now. If only we got weekly US sales figures... that would be nice heh

How do we know that? Each week's sales figures are basically what Nintendo sold into the market. Both the DS and the Wii have this problem at the moment... Sell in = Sell thru. We can't judge what the potential demand is because we have no idea how high it really goes. It may be MASSIVE compared to the current weekly figures we see. Who is to say that if Nintendo shipped 500,000 units into circulation one week they wouldn't sell 200k+? I know that's being completely optimistic but how could Nintendo have ever forseen that they would be STILL selling more than 100k DS's WEEKLY during the slowest months of the year? It's crazy! I wonder the same thing for the Wii, if it was readily available how far would the demand really go?? We don't really know. I think the demand is starting to slow in the USA at the moment, but not Europe and Japan. I think the PS3 is already too far behind and has no real chance of catching up in the homeland, I expect we will see a DS:PSP situation with Wii:PS3 in Japan.