CESA: Japanese Game Market On Rebound

A report by trade association the Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association (CESA) in the latest issue of Japanese magazine Weekly Famitsu has shown further evidence of an upturn in the country's consumer market for games, with sales up notably in 2005, thanks to the Nintendo DS' success in the country. As partially translated by consumer website GameSpot, combined hardware and software sales in 2005 increased by 13.9 percent to ¥496.5 ($4.3bn), with software alone totaling ¥314.1 billion ($2.70bn), and hardware up by as much as 51.9 percent to ¥182.4 billion ($1.57bn). As expected, the Nintendo DS and PSP were behind the majority of the increase, with Nintendo’s portable selling 4.25 million units and Sony’s 2.61 million. Global shipments for Japanese software and hardware totaled over ¥1.36 trillion ($11.7bn) in worth, again a significant increase on 2004 and largely due to portable formats also including the Game Boy Advance. The report also quantifies the average cost of developing titles for each format, for Japanese companies, not including budget priced games. As the only prominent home console in the Japanese market the PlayStation 2 was rated as the most expensive at ¥139 million ($1.2m) a game, followed by the PSP at ¥32 million ($0.54m) and the Nintendo DS at ¥39.8 million ($0.34m) - seemingly very low compared to the Western market, if correct. With results so far this year showing a continued improvement in Japanese sales, led by an ever increasing dominance for the Nintendo DS, the next major hurdle for the recovering market is the release of the next generation of home consoles – of which the Xbox 360 has so far made no sizeable impact, and the Wii at least remains an unknown quantity.