It's well known that in Japan home consoles are overwhelmed by portable ones in terms of popularity, but the Japanese may be losing further interest at the outset of a new generation. The local statistics firm Goo ranking conducted a cellphone-based poll on the question "What are you no longer spending time and money on recently?"
2144 people responded and the results were fairly surprising.
- Home video games (352 votes)
- Listening to music (on CD) (295 votes)
- Beauty (282 votes)
- Dining out (191 votes)
- Anime (163 votes)
- Going to the movies (139 votes)
- Reading (135 votes)
- Traveling (133 votes)
- Newspaper and magazine subscriptions (121 votes)
- Day to day dieting (89 votes)
- Sports (84 votes)
- Improving skills (50 votes)
- Social games (49 votes)
- Online shopping (46 votes)
- TV shopping (15 votes)
While the respondent pool is not exactly enormous, the poll paints the picture of a Japan losing interest in home consoles and more interested in portable and social games, and the sales charts that come out every week seem to confirm it.
The coming of a new generation seems to have revitalized interest in gaming consoles in the west, but in Japan neither next gen console has a release date yet. Will they be able to grab Japan's attention again when they'll be released? No way to know, but we can only hope.