Nintendo has now dominated Japan game sales for 19 consecutive years | VGC
Interesting that they were on top even in the Wii U days, did the PS4 do that badly in Japan?
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[VGC] Nintendo has now dominated Japan game sales for 19 consecutive years
- Thread starter LakeOf9
- Start date
Interesting that they were on top even in the Wii U days, did the PS4 do that badly in Japan?
lughnasadh123
Member
If Japan wants to stick with Nintendo it makes sense PS moves on to other more welcoming countries. Seems to be working out just fine that way for them.
Woopah
Member
I wouldn't say that the PS4 did badly per say, its just that Nintendo is by far the most popular publisher in Japan.
PlayStation's past success in Japan was achieved through a third-party led model, bringing over publishers like Square, Capcom, Namco and Enix to develop for PlayStation instead of Nintendo, and so securing their biggest franchises.
But that model no longer works when the majority of the biggest franchises in Japan are owned by Nintendo. So Sony has to either develop a bunch of new hit franchises themselves, or help third partes create a bunch of hit new franchises and put them on their platform but not Nintendo's.
And that is an incredibly difficult to do.
PlayStation's past success in Japan was achieved through a third-party led model, bringing over publishers like Square, Capcom, Namco and Enix to develop for PlayStation instead of Nintendo, and so securing their biggest franchises.
But that model no longer works when the majority of the biggest franchises in Japan are owned by Nintendo. So Sony has to either develop a bunch of new hit franchises themselves, or help third partes create a bunch of hit new franchises and put them on their platform but not Nintendo's.
And that is an incredibly difficult to do.
Investor9872
Member
And that isn't going to change for the next 19 years!
nial
Gold Member
You know that 3DS was a thing, right? And no, in fact, Japan was the second biggest market for PS4 after United States.
Completely forgot but that makes sense!
I think the disparity in hardware power alone should mean Sony will get a lot of third party stuff Nintendo won't - Monster Hunter, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Persona, Dragon Quest - so I think they should be able to remain competitive for now, even if Nintendo is doing this much better.
Woopah
Member
I wouldn't include Dragon Quest on that list, but you're right about the rest.
The issue now is that Switch 2 will close the hardware gap significantly, meaning we could potentially see some of those franchises start releasing on Nintendo too.
It's going to be interesting to see how the Japanese market reacts to that new hardware.
nial
Gold Member
Japan Studio's internal efforts were never big hits in their domestic market and they've ALWAYS struggled to compete with Nintendo's offerings. Team Asobi is pretty much them focusing on a single IP, which may or may not be successful long the road, we have to wait.
Furthermore, Japan Studio was created in 2005, which is the year this article focuses on.
"On the hardware front, only one year in the last 19 has seen a non-Nintendo console on top in Japan, which was when PSP was the leading platform. In every other year, either DS, 3DS or Switch were the best-selling hardware."
That's incorrect, at least as the article was framed.
I explain:
In 2010 NDS and PSP HW YTDs in Japan were very close.
For Media Create PSP topped NDS for the year whereas for Famitsu was the opposite.
Since the only tracker cited in the article is Famitsu (Kadokawa) then the more rationale affirmation would have been that for the last 19 years every year a Nintendo console was the top selling one.
Otherwise should have explicitly cited the referenced tracking agency.
That's incorrect, at least as the article was framed.
I explain:
In 2010 NDS and PSP HW YTDs in Japan were very close.
For Media Create PSP topped NDS for the year whereas for Famitsu was the opposite.
Since the only tracker cited in the article is Famitsu (Kadokawa) then the more rationale affirmation would have been that for the last 19 years every year a Nintendo console was the top selling one.
Otherwise should have explicitly cited the referenced tracking agency.
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SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Japan is gameplay first.
Must be why all those visual novels do well there.
Woopah
Member
It's as much gameplay first as anywhere else in the world.
Silver Wattle
Gold Member
Portable consoles win in Japan.
Vita was the outlier due to bad decisions by Sony, proprietary storage, letting MH go exclusive to 3DS etc.
Unless Sony go hard on a PSP3(lol), I can not see Nintendo relinquishing the crown in the next decade.
Vita was the outlier due to bad decisions by Sony, proprietary storage, letting MH go exclusive to 3DS etc.
Unless Sony go hard on a PSP3(lol), I can not see Nintendo relinquishing the crown in the next decade.
FalsettoVibe
Member
This. Unless Sony finds a way to make a compelling portable, Nintendo will always be ahead. I know there will never be another dedicated one, and I'm fine with that, but I'd love to see Sony can release a PS Portal v2 with Wifi 6, 5G connectivity and Cloud Support, they might just be on to something.
MacReady13
Member
Spot on. It’s why I favour Nintendo over any other company. They seem to remember why we PLAY games for in the 1st place…
Fake
Member
Western destroy everything. They don't even realize that Sony is a japanese company, and because so Japan don't allow the company to be selled to any other company outside Japan.
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Robb
Gold Member
I had the impression it was mostly now during the Switch generation. Sounds crazy that they managed to stay on top during the WiiU days, even if 3DS did fairly well.
Sony need to step up their game, one company dominating the market for that long doesn’t sound healthy. Bring on some competition.
Sony need to step up their game, one company dominating the market for that long doesn’t sound healthy. Bring on some competition.
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Last Hearth
Member
And this is why, for all intents and purposes, Sony has become a developer of games for the West, they've mostly given up on Japan.
EDMIX
Member
I mean, shit Japan Studio didn't help Japan Studio by making flop after flop lol
The fuck?
Japan is Sony's second biggest market because of their strong 3rd party support. In Japan, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Resident Evil, Kingdom Hearts, Street Fighter, Tekken, Yakuza, Persona and many more might as well be exclusive, because PS is where they sell the most anyway.
So I don't see how Japan Studio was going to "help" some how, where the fuck was that help the past several generations?
Do you hear how weird and odd that sounds to think a proven failed thing, was going to um "help" when during those years, it wasn't actually helping at all?
So I love Japan Studio too bud, but this is about business. You must separate that shit and have a real rational look at that whole situation. If the games flopped, clearly they were not helping and I don't see why Sony would continue that route, keep in mind, they merely hired more for a different team in Japan by you now, rewarding the successful studio?
Team Asobi Gets Bigger, Will Work on a Franchise for All Ages with Global Appeal
Team Asobi, the development team behind Astro Bot: Rescue Mission and Astro's Playroom, is getting bigger and will work on a new franchise.
wccftech.com
Woopah
Member
Sony's issue in Japan isnt hardware but software (PS5 generate more hardware revenue than Switch this year I believe).
A portable console wouldn't be significantly more successful than the PS5 unless they fixed the software issue.
That was entirely down to the 3DS, Wii U had very poor software support.
Software sales are more indicative of dominance than pure hardware sales, also solely the top 10 best selling games could give a wrong impression because you are preseting only the very top of the pyrimid.
So even if the article gives the correct concept of Nintendo dominating Japan for a long time, it isn't as enlightening for uneducated persons (on the matter).
Especially because Nintendo's dominance has changed shapes through the years.
The japanese market went from being dominated by PlayStation (majority of software sold) on the back of the push granted from local third-party publishers, to be dominated by Nintendo on the back of first-party software (to be precise hardware-software integration).
Support from third-parties later would follow but they would always show a preference for PlayStation (PlayStation ecosystem tended to have the majority of the annual game releases).
Also the market in the late '00 and early '10s were very fractured with many active platforms (multiple per manufacturer) that didn't share game software.
A japanese publishers that wanted to fund a HD project would have never chosen the Nintendo DS despite being extremely popular in Japan (and worldwide), this gave room to breath to PlayStation while being under siege on all fronts by Nintendo.
However the more tech advanced, the more Nintendo consoles could support the previous style of games unachievable.
For example Monster Hunter, which was a very important differentiator for PSP in the struggle with NDS, got absorbed by the 3DS a few years later.
In the current phase the market consolidated so much that there are 2,5 platforms active on the market (one from Nintendo and one from Sony, with the 0,5 being the predecessors that are globbed up with the successors due to the manufactures wanto a smooth transition to migrate the big userbase held together by the digital system; Xbox is irrelevant) and there is an unprecedented high number of third-party software releases shared between the Nintendo ecosystem and the PlayStation ecosystem.
Less informed people have a tendecy to single out the few differentiators that still remains in the PS camp (for example for 2023 releases I think of Final Fantasy, Armored Core, Yakuza, Resident Evil) as a lifeline without realizing that the Nintendo camp too have third-party exclusives (for example for 2023 releases Dragon Quest Monsters, Momotaro Dentetsu, Jinsei Game) and on top of that the majority of the yearly releases are shared, which advantages the strongest platform (Nintendo).
The shift was so strong that Nintendo has stolen a typical trademark of PlayStation of old, that is now is enjoying the higher number of annual game releases at retails something that in the past had to be a prerogative of PlayStation cause PlayStation has always followed a third-party driven model, unlike Nintendo which follows a first-party driven model.
Even worse for PlayStation, with the exception of Final Fantasy, every other big third-party game of 2023 that didn't appear on Switch (Armored Core, Yakuza, Resident Evil) had a PS4 version and I bet the Switch successor could support "PS4 level" games.
So even if the article gives the correct concept of Nintendo dominating Japan for a long time, it isn't as enlightening for uneducated persons (on the matter).
Especially because Nintendo's dominance has changed shapes through the years.
The japanese market went from being dominated by PlayStation (majority of software sold) on the back of the push granted from local third-party publishers, to be dominated by Nintendo on the back of first-party software (to be precise hardware-software integration).
Support from third-parties later would follow but they would always show a preference for PlayStation (PlayStation ecosystem tended to have the majority of the annual game releases).
Also the market in the late '00 and early '10s were very fractured with many active platforms (multiple per manufacturer) that didn't share game software.
A japanese publishers that wanted to fund a HD project would have never chosen the Nintendo DS despite being extremely popular in Japan (and worldwide), this gave room to breath to PlayStation while being under siege on all fronts by Nintendo.
However the more tech advanced, the more Nintendo consoles could support the previous style of games unachievable.
For example Monster Hunter, which was a very important differentiator for PSP in the struggle with NDS, got absorbed by the 3DS a few years later.
In the current phase the market consolidated so much that there are 2,5 platforms active on the market (one from Nintendo and one from Sony, with the 0,5 being the predecessors that are globbed up with the successors due to the manufactures wanto a smooth transition to migrate the big userbase held together by the digital system; Xbox is irrelevant) and there is an unprecedented high number of third-party software releases shared between the Nintendo ecosystem and the PlayStation ecosystem.
Less informed people have a tendecy to single out the few differentiators that still remains in the PS camp (for example for 2023 releases I think of Final Fantasy, Armored Core, Yakuza, Resident Evil) as a lifeline without realizing that the Nintendo camp too have third-party exclusives (for example for 2023 releases Dragon Quest Monsters, Momotaro Dentetsu, Jinsei Game) and on top of that the majority of the yearly releases are shared, which advantages the strongest platform (Nintendo).
The shift was so strong that Nintendo has stolen a typical trademark of PlayStation of old, that is now is enjoying the higher number of annual game releases at retails something that in the past had to be a prerogative of PlayStation cause PlayStation has always followed a third-party driven model, unlike Nintendo which follows a first-party driven model.
Even worse for PlayStation, with the exception of Final Fantasy, every other big third-party game of 2023 that didn't appear on Switch (Armored Core, Yakuza, Resident Evil) had a PS4 version and I bet the Switch successor could support "PS4 level" games.
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Orbital2060
Member
If you take the trend of diminishing 3p software sales in Japan into account, its more likely Sony closed Japan Studios because they had given up on Japan at that point. And started the process of westernising the brand as we have seen with moving the X and O buttons on the controller, and focusing on safe movie-game productions that appeal to a western audience. I think they might have kept JS around if the third party sales were higher and generating more money for them in Japan.I mean, shit Japan Studio didn't help Japan Studio by making flop after flop lol
The fuck?
Japan is Sony's second biggest market because of their strong 3rd party support. In Japan, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Resident Evil, Kingdom Hearts, Street Fighter, Tekken, Yakuza, Persona and many more might as well be exclusive, because PS is where they sell the most anyway.
So I don't see how Japan Studio was going to "help" some how, where the fuck was that help the past several generations?
Do you hear how weird and odd that sounds to think a proven failed thing, was going to um "help" when during those years, it wasn't actually helping at all?
So I love Japan Studio too bud, but this is about business. You must separate that shit and have a real rational look at that whole situation. If the games flopped, clearly they were not helping and I don't see why Sony would continue that route, keep in mind, they merely hired more for a different team in Japan by you now, rewarding the successful studio?
Team Asobi Gets Bigger, Will Work on a Franchise for All Ages with Global Appeal
Team Asobi, the development team behind Astro Bot: Rescue Mission and Astro's Playroom, is getting bigger and will work on a new franchise.
KungFucius
King Snowflake
This isn't good for PS owners outside of Japan. Having games designed to appeal to Japanese gamers on the PS or any platform increases the diversity of games available. I don't venture much into 3rd party games on Switch. How many Japanese 3rd party Switch games come to the US and do well enough that they will continue to do that?
Tams
Member
RickMasters
Member
Playstation has been more westernised since the tail end of the x360 era.
EDMIX
Member
I see zero evidence of that, cause why would they then hire more for team Asobi?
That has always been a thing though, Playstation was always branded for west and east
Plus if that was the case why would they make Ghost Of Tsushima? A very fucking Japanese game lol That doesn't sound like they have any issues with the east bud, why would they even get a timed deal for FFVII remake, FFXVI? They hate Japan so much, they want those games marketed only for them or? That simply doesn't make sense.
All this shows is the issue at hand was Japan Studio, not Asboi, not JAPANESE GAMES or anything of the sort. The studio continued to produce flops, they couldn't justify keeping it open, rewarded the team that was doing well.
Thats it.
apple_of_enlightenment
Member
Japan is the heart of quality. Sony have focused on brand first. Eventually people see through that.
