AfterDawn: News

Japanese videogame sales fall sharply

Enterbrain has released the videogame sales figures for the first six months of the fiscal year in Japan and it appears that sales have slowed greatly, falling over 20 percent year on year.

The sales data is for the period of March 31, 2008 through September 28, 2008 and despite the sharp fall the Sony PlayStation Portable handheld was the biggest seller, beating out its biggest rival the Nintendo DS Lite handheld.



According to Kotaku, the figures look like the following:

• Hardware:
Nintendo DS (DS and DS Lite)
First half of the year: 1,314,919
Total units sold: 23,484,680

PSP (PSP-1000 and PSP-2000)
First half of the year: 1,583,731
Total units sold: 10,157,757

Wii
First half of the year: 1,105,174
Total units sold: 6,800,753

PlayStation 3
First half of the year: 352,457
Total units sold: 2,361,949

Xbox 360
First half of the year: 138,740
Total units sold: 741,298

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 5 Oct 2008 16:16

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• 6 comments

• DXR88

  Is this supposed to shock people. its called market saturation (japan being geographically small it doesn't take long to saturate, not only that but Two of the major System Makers, are in japan.)
  
  Or maybe there kinda taking the hint on how (Western Cultured A lot of game are becoming. not only that there boring as hell to.)
  
  (PT) Somtimes i wanna puke at all the FPS's out there.

  6.10.2008 01:16 #1

• Paladore

  maybe this is why the xbox is starting to gain sales in japan now?

  6.10.2008 02:02 #2

• kyo28

  actually, we're still very far from market saturation in Japan. It may be a relatively small country but the population density is high. Think of it this way:
  - 120 million Japanese residents
  - 2.5 PS3s sold
  That's far from saturation.
  
  I think the problem is the lack of Japanese oriented games on the newer console, except perhaps for the Wii. Perhaps the PS3 will pick up steam again come 2010, when everyone in Japan will be forced to adopt a HDTV.

  6.10.2008 08:31 #3

• DXR88

  Originally posted by kyo28: actually, we're still very far from market saturation in Japan. It may be a relatively small country but the population density is high. Think of it this way:
  - 120 million Japanese residents
  - 2.5 PS3s sold
  That's far from saturation.
  
  I think the problem is the lack of Japanese oriented games on the newer console, except perhaps for the Wii. Perhaps the PS3 will pick up steam again come 2010, when everyone in Japan will be forced to adopt a HDTV.Tis why i said Geographically Small.
  
  And Mayhap you are right, about the Lack of interest in Current titles.

  6.10.2008 11:45 #4

• varnull

  Quite possibly poor games, and maybe the Japanese are reacting to the global crisis by holding on to their cash and seeing what pans out.
  
  As things stand I wouldn't even think of spending £300+ on anything that wasn't absolutely necessary right now...
  
  People with money seem to be putting it into gold. I overheard a local jeweller talking about the rising gold price. He is surprised it is rising while right now today the oil price is falling... He was saying they usually track pretty closely.. When somebody who has been in the precious metals trade for 40 odd years thinks the market is behaving in strange ways then it's time to be cautious with what you have in hand.
  
  Even so it's a little odd.. With the supposed boom in 360 sales you would think people want games to go with them... or are they buying used?
  

  
  
  Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work. The flower of carnage-shura no hana

  6.10.2008 12:48 #5

• mrmarx

  MAYBE IT"S THE ECONOMY.

  6.10.2008 13:55 #6