Japan Sales Thread *renamed
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tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
As I said, 1 in every 6.5 Japanese people has a DS, you'll run out of Japanese people to sell one to at some point
And if you dont count the really young and the older people I suppose it could be 1 on 5 or less.The psp lite is about 25 euro's more expensive than the DSL on amazon.jp so I think its mainly selling as a cheap movie/music player? I read somewhere that almost every psp sold the buyer also buys a larger memstick for it which could support that.
One thing is sure though I think its not selling more because of the games.
But if they've all got DSes, why are they buying PSPs? By that reasoning, PSP sales ought to be going down as the handheld market becomes saturated. Unless the media functions or something in PSP is appealing to people who also have DSes, in which case why the change? No matter how you look at it, for the PSP to sell more than it was, it has to have gained appeal, which is the big question. Was it always a device that the Japanese market would buy, but they chose DS first?As I said, 1 in every 6.5 Japanese people has a DS, you'll run out of Japanese people to sell one to at some point
inefficient
Veteran
I just realized something today on the train coming home from work.
I was standing next to this guy who was reading his manga/comic book. And I was kind of leaning over his shoulder reading it. And while reading it, it just dawned on me, "I don't see people reading comics that often anymore". This is just my impression, but I feel like many Japanese people have moved away from reading their comics and more toward playing games.
If you went back in time a few years ago I think you would have seen many more people, just regular commuters, reading some kind of manga. But the arrival of the DS and PSP have captured a lot of that market. The GB and GBA had the stigma of being kids toys. But seeing adults playing DS or PSP in public spaces, especially during their commute is getting more and more common.
I wonder if any real market research has been done in this area. Like if sales of manga have been down since the launch of the DS and PSP.
Edit: wow I found this article that seems to confirm my suspicions. url
I was standing next to this guy who was reading his manga/comic book. And I was kind of leaning over his shoulder reading it. And while reading it, it just dawned on me, "I don't see people reading comics that often anymore". This is just my impression, but I feel like many Japanese people have moved away from reading their comics and more toward playing games.
If you went back in time a few years ago I think you would have seen many more people, just regular commuters, reading some kind of manga. But the arrival of the DS and PSP have captured a lot of that market. The GB and GBA had the stigma of being kids toys. But seeing adults playing DS or PSP in public spaces, especially during their commute is getting more and more common.
I wonder if any real market research has been done in this area. Like if sales of manga have been down since the launch of the DS and PSP.
Edit: wow I found this article that seems to confirm my suspicions. url
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If you want insist on applying the same kind of silly analogy to the DS, then DS would be a 1.5 gen successor of the N64.
The reason for PSPs uptake is that people like to get something new every now and then. The PSP is the only other big thing out there, and it's getting better all the time, though for the Japanese, the PSP 'light' and stuff like Crisis Core certainly have been a catalyst - but it has also brought its media features into play some more.
Most importantly, the PSP and DS hardly overlap in terms of gameplay experience offered. In that sense, people can own a PSP and a DS together fairly easily. And saturation of one kind of demand often drives another kind.
Actually the DS is ahead by just over 700,000 units.
Either the PSP is bought by people who already own a DS then, or people that did not buy a DS prefer a PSP which shows that PSP is gaining momentum regardless
That's what I'm wondering. I think they just decided to spontaneously not care about the mainstream consoles and instead go portable, so in this case if they already have the DS there's nothing else to buy BUT the PSP! Heh...
Plenty of Pokemon mentality out there, eh? "Gotta catch 'em all."
I though they were not yet at 22 mil? Sony's numbers mention ~25.5 million in Japan at the beginning of 2007, and while that's "shipped" not "sold," their end of 2005 and 2006 numbers showed only about 500-1mil in the channel.
Edit: Sorry, forgetting their corporate numbers include other asian countries including South Korea as "Japan." I blame MagicBox for not having a proper 2006 or 2007 chart out yet!
(I like cross-checking by earlier years.)
You're right! Now is the time to relaunch Gizmondo!Let's say DS sells 100,000 a week and PSP sells 50,000. If more than 2/3 of DS software sales are Brain Training and likes, it's not so hard to imagine 2/3 of hardware buyers might not be gamers (or hardcore/traditional gamers).
I think the WonderSwan is going to strike back, personally...
Well that hypothetical scenario is boring but actually it's an impression shared with a third-party publisher in Japan.So by your hypothetical scenario you've drawn it as fact that the PSP is "the gamer's choice"?
Interview with Shin Unozawa, Bandai Namco Games VP in Dec 2007
http://japan.cnet.com/sp/game2007/story/0,3800082083,20363952-2,00.htm
machine translation
When asked what's up in the portable market where the migration process has been completed unlike still strong PS2, basically he says traditional gamers who supported the move from NES/Super NES to Playstation are now on PSP judging from what are selling on it. Capcom's Monster Hunter and Bandai Namco's Gundam Battle Royale and Gundam Battle Chronicle are million sellers and smash hits. OTOH, "new gamers" (or so-called non-gamers) and "returning gamers" (who played old NES games and left) are main DS users and they don't want Playstation-esque games. Bandai Namco offers Tamagochi for DS which is a million seller. So they have to develop titles with these different market demands on mind. Also he talks about the absolute install base of PSP that has grown to a serious market, and the possibility that there are many people who own both DS and PSP.
Bandai Namco FY 2008.3: Nine Months Ended - Financial Highlights
http://www.bandainamco.co.jp/en/ir/financial/pdf_bnh/en_080206_2.pdf
PSP - 10 titles, 1,500,000 copies sold
DS - 24 titles, 2,728,000 copies sold
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That's a very interesting analysis one. On the surface, it makes a lot of sense. The only problem I can find with it right now is the factor of Nintendo as a competing publisher on the DS, and analysing how many gamers on the DS prefer Nintendo's titles there over competing products from, say, Namco.