Concern Over Dropping Japanese Console Sales

Posted by simoniker on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @08:16PM from the more-games-more-competition dept.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Yahoo/Reuters Japan article discussing worrying issues for Japanese console and software makers. The article states that "..sales of family game machines in fiscal 2002 were 8.76 million units, down about 20% from fiscal 2001, when sales jumped 30% ahead of the year before." It also notes that "per-title sales [for Playstation 2 software in 2002] dropped 25% to around 63,000", even as the total volume increased to almost 30 million units. The article postulated this is because "..the market is turning from one of growth, to one.. where manufacturers compete with each other to get a bigger share." Possible solutions suggested include "producing items that can link to audiovisual equipment, or.. cultivating markets overseas."

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Re:If they only would.... by edwdig · 2003-06-12 03:02 · Score: 2, Informative

Final Fantasy has a huge amount of dialog to be translated. Why not release it in Japan when its ready? It doesn't make sense to have the Japanese version sit and collect dust while waiting for the English translation.

Also, by getting the English version later, you usually end up with fixes to bugs in the Japanese release. Or tweaks to fix things people complained about (i.e. in Zelda: Wind Waker, a section of the game towards the end was made much less tedious for the US release, because Japanese gamers complained about it). Considering you can't just download updates to a console game, its not necessarily a bad thing to get the game a little later.