Nintendo Dominates Contracting Japanese Videogame Market

Kotaku's Brian Ashcraft translated Famitsu's report on the 2008 year end sales data for Japan put together by Enterbrain. Overall the combined market for hardware and software declined a substantial 15 percent from 687.95 billion Yen in 2007 to 582.61 billion Yen on 2008. Hardware bore the brunt of the loss, falling some 23 percent from 327.41 billion Yen to 250.5 billion Yen spent, and in part this can be attributed to price reductions on the consoles. In contrast, software sales only slipped about 8 percent compared to 2007, falling from 360.54 billion Yen to 332.12 billion Yen spent. The figures also overwhelmingly show that when Japanese gamers do spend on games, that money predominantly winds up going to Nintendo. Its handheld hardware rolled on, racking up combined sales 4,029,804 units of the DS, Lite, and new DSi. Likewise, the Wii topped the home console arena with 2,908,342 sold in 2008. That story repeats in ... (link)