Japan Sales Thread

What's LTD ?

 

LTD = Life To Date.

 

PS3 sold this year in NA almost 2.5 times more than the xb360 ?
Are those the latest NPD numers?

 

Japan sales.

 

These are Japan sales, collated and aligned to the same dates that NPD use, for comparison.

NPD sales get their own monthly threads, this is the Japan sales thread.

I have edited the post to make it clearer though.

 

Media Create Numbers (4/6 to 4/12)

 

Something on GAF about a new sku? But I'm not sure what the heck theyre talking about..did the Arcade used to not be available in Japan?

They linked to it on amazon japan but it just seemed like an Arcade SKU to me.

Edit:

Not sure if they mean the Arcade with built in storage/hdmi is new to Japan, or the Arcade altogether is?

 

Graphs...

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2009/04/console-post-of-week-japan.html

Tommy McClain

 

Apparently Japan is still stupid for Final Fantasy.

Edit:

 

Very impressive PS3 Sales, would Final Fantasy still be driving those numbers so high.

 

How could PS3 be selling so many units, when none of its games even made it to the top 10 last week? I don't get it...

 

http://ps3.qj.net/Thank-you-FFXIII-demo-PS3-sales-in-Japan-revs-ahead/pg/49/aid/130650

 

He was talking about the expanded market, not the casual market. "Expanded market" and "casual gamers" are not synonyms.

http://books.google.com/books?id=fK...a=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#PPP1,M1

If you don't read the book, here's a synopsis of the idea:
http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/employee-development-leadership/367000-1.html

Nintendo gets its language, categories and strategies from the Harvard Business School, not from video game forums or IGN. It's amazing how open they are about this, yet everyone refuses to believe them and instead have decided that their strategy is to make "casual games" and attract "casual gamers" instead of the cool, sophisticated "hardcore gamer."

 

The real answer to obonicus' question is that in Japan, the expanded market is mostly into handhelds. I need to look at aggregate data when I have time, but here's the week of Apr 5 in 2003:

PlayStation 2 - 47,391
Game Boy Advance SP - 40,166
GameCube - 6,263
Game Boy Advance - 3,701
Xbox - 557
PSone - 310
Wonder Swan Crystal - 165

Total sales are up 35% in 2009, but home consoles overall are down 43%. Neither the PS3 nor the Wii are drawing the kind of interest that PS2 did in 2003. Rather, handheld sales are up a whopping 131%. This snapshot suggests that there are more gamers overall in Japan, and the numbers say it's the handhelds that are drawing them in. The real question is whether the PSP drawing in very many new or lapsed gamers, or if most of its buyers are simply migrating from the PS2. That's something that you'd need internal company demographic data to know, but the range of titles on DS suggest that it's the primary growth driver.

Of course, that's assuming this little snapshot is representative.

 

The hardcore gamer isnt viewed as cool and sophisticated, rather some no life nerd who probably doesn't smell good holed up playing Halo 3..the hardcore gamer is far from "politically correct" the way the soccer mom gamer is..

Anyways, I'd argue the hardcore/casual labels are far more representative of reality than "Harvard business school" terms..at least in the USA..Japan is a different culture, I may not have a bead on whats going on there..

Nintendo has stated Japanese move on from fads quicker, and this may be why the Wii is struggling there.

 

The FFXIII demo was included with FFXII ACC on Blu-Ray, which was bundled with the PS3, so it doesn't count as software.

Big boost for just a demo. Just imagine how big of a boost the game will give.

 

I'd have thought that most people without a PS3 who really want the game would have bought one for the demo.

 

I wouldn't say most -- how many people do you think would buy a PS3 for a demo? I think there will still be a big boost when the game comes out, at least bigger than the boost the demo gave, especially if it gets released during the holidays.

 

I say a lot of those sales were probably Final Fantasy fans that are looking forward to the game AND probably didn't have a BluRay player already.

But that's just a wild stab in the dark guess.

Regards,
SB

 

People who use the term non-ironically typically use it of themselves and other gamers that they consider cool and sophisticated within their gamer world. "Casual" is a derogatory term used of people that they feel are undeserving of the mantle of a "true" gamer, as well as of the games they feel are undeserving of a "true" game. It's not real market analysis, since no such bifurcation exists and is impossible to define. Rather, it's a psychological phenomenon, the protest of a bitter subset of customers who resents the existence of products with a low barrier to entry that they see as cheapening their pasttime. Some outsiders hear this protest and, making the mistaken assumption that longtime customers understand the market rationally, try to analyze the market in those terms (and fail). This is common when an innovator is expanding a market--critics and obsessive ("hardcore" in gamer language)movie buffs mocked and resented Indiana Jones and Star Wars and the fans that made them popular.

Well, then we're in an odd state of affairs. The company that has explicitly modeled its approach off strategies envisioned at the HBS by luminaries like Clayton Christensen is making money hand over fist and growing the market, while analysts and journalists who try to explain everything in terms of "hardcore/casual" are unable to get even the most basic predictions right or even define things coherently. Pretty weird how the people most in tune with reality make the worst predictions and give the worst business advice. I've noticed most businesses tend to be more impressed by what comes out of HBS than video game forums, too.