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Concern Over Dropping Japanese Console Sales

Posted by simoniker on 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."

4 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. If they only would.... by Hougaard · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Release some of all the cool stuff in Europe and USA - Why is it, that we get stuff ½ - 1½ year after its released in Japan ??

  2. duh by cyrax777 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    japans economy is in in the toilet no wonder the sales of consoles is down. That and there market has been pretty much flooded with the dang things.

  3. Burden of Proof by robbway · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The article fails the burden of proof to its thesis. In order to show decline, you must show a simultaneous drop in: console sales, console titles. With the dropping price of PCs, you must also include PC's as a console and count game software as console titles.

    If you can show a consistent drop in all those areas, then yes, the thesis is upheld. Even better, if you multiply console sales drops by their previous market share, you can take a weighted average and pretty closely estimate that drop.

    The article fails to do this. I'm not saying the article is wrong, but what happened to responsible journalism? Oh, yeah. FOX!

  4. Do the math by DrWho520 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Let x = sales in 2000
    if sales went up 30% in 2001, then...
    x + 0.3x = 1.3x = sales in 2001
    and if sales went down 20% this year, then...
    1.3x - 0.2*(1.3x) = 1.04x = sales in 2002

    therefore, that means sales over all went up, since 1.04x > x, 4% since 2000. Or I could be crazy.

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