Concern Over Dropping Japanese Console Sales

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."

Comments

Piracy

[Kris_J]

The problem is obviously piracy. The games market was doing fine, but now there's this Interweb thing that people use to steal stuff. Ban fibre-optics!

duh

[cyrax777]

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.

What do they expect?

[AvantLegion]

There is a finite amount of consumer cash out there, and the PS2 is nearing the end of its life cycle. It should not surprise anyone that a high rate of PS2 game sales growth isn't being sustained.

Consoles continue to sell units up until the end of their product cycles, but the large majority of existing installed base is not buying games at the same rate that they were in the past. For the current PS2 owner, the number of worthwhile NEW titles is waning.

Do the math

[DrWho520]

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.