I'd be wary of using Persona 5 sales as evidence that interest in PS4 software is picking up. When Yakuza: Kiwami launched early this year, 40% of sales were on PS3. And 30% of Tales of Berseria launch copies were sold on PS3 last month.
While the majority of launch sales of Persona 5 were on PS4, it's more likely that the audience interested in Persona 5 were the people who'd have bought PS4s anyway at this stage, and they aren't necessarily representative of the entire console market in Japan. Likewise, console sales have gone up admirably year-on-year (though last year's sales during this period were depressingly low), but unless Persona 5 has Splatoon-like legs it won't save the PS4, much like how, say, Smash Bros 4 didn't save the Wii U.
Still, Sony needs to do something. Vita is getting long in the tooth for releasing handheld versions of bigger budget games (World of Final Fantasy may be one of the last), and if PS4 Pro and PS VR don't reignite PS4 sales I don't know what will. I wonder if SIE intend to relaunch PS4 in the region along with the Slim and some compelling software.
On one side, we have the entire might of the relevant JP console third parties and exclusivity on the popular western games. On the other side, we have a plumber and some squids. Took them long enough seeing how the Wii U has had about half a dozen notable releases this year.
It's good for PS4 to get here, and software sales seem to be sustainable enough for good releases for the most part, but the Wii U will still hold a few wins. It has 4 million sellers, and one of them has the potential to hit 2 million. Will the high end PS4 software hit those heights? Time will tell, but I'm not optimistic.
Interesting post. It's amazing that it even took this long to outsell the Wii U to begin with, and Splatoon is one of the best selling console games in Japan released in the past decade which certainly says something (I'm just not sure what exactly).
With a Splatoon followup, NX is guaranteed to sell at least as well as Wii U in Japan, but it's also absorbing the entirety of the handheld market that came before it. Though I suspect if publishers release upcoming games as cross-gen 3DS/NX (like Monster Hunter 5) NX adoption might not be that fast. We'll see.
Bingo.
It's actually very typical for Nintendo to cater to the Japanese. New dedicated handhelds just don't seem like a viable option in the West in the year 2017.
Granted, it's also a hybrid home console, so I guess they are covering their bases.
Yup. Iwata mentioned in 2014 (I think) that their next platform would make considerations for how people play across the world.