Well, I'm back in Japan. From what I can tell, this seems about right. The PSP is getting TONS of advertising. It's perhaps a little criminal in some way. Yesterday at my local Bic Camera, there were store employees outside with megaphones calling people to buy the new PSP. There's been TV ads run all over the store and even the mom and pop places are running PSP ads like it's the second coming of Christ. Being the journalist I am, I figured I'd ask a few people who were buying PSPs why they were buying and 8 out of 10 already had a PSP and were just buying an upgrade. The big features were TV support and the weight. Of course, with Crisis Core, it does help drive sales a bit. But I figure the sales are going to be high for the next few weeks as people trade up from their old PSP to the new one.
As for the Wii, the big issue is really no games to play. Of the people I spoke with outside of the local Shiita, the big issue was that the system doesn't have enough traditional games. Of course, Power Pro 2 is out and I haven't gotten much of a sample since it's release. Nintendo is going to need to do something to get people to keep buying Wiis as it seems like the lure of Wii Sports just isn't doing it anymore. Not only that, but my guess is the large string of cash-in games and no big exclusives is going to hurt in the long run. People are still buying them, but they're waiting on games and who knows when that's gonna come trough for them. Can't blame them, really. All of the "huge" games are on other systems.
I'll keep an eye on more trends as time goes one. What I found funny is that for some reason a lot of the Wii shovelware games have been released here in Japan. Seems like they're hurtin' and its starting to show.
