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The story
In Japan’s home console market, Nintendo Switch has sold roughly 37 million units domestically, compared to only about 9.5 million units for the PlayStation 4 — meaning most of the worldwide gap between the two (Switch at 155 million vs. PS4 at 115 million in cumulative shipments) effectively comes down to the Japanese market alone. An analysis article built on these numbers was reposted to 5ch’s Hardware/Industry board (known as “Geha”), sparking debate tied to PS5’s ongoing sales slump in Japan. Posters disagreed on the cause, pointing variously to software lineup direction, pricing strategy, and an aging user base.
Even in Japan, to this degree—
This gap arose because Nintendo pushed policies that prioritized the Japanese market. While Sony Group is seen as having scaled back domestic investment, Nintendo kept tirelessly cultivating the Japanese market. The result: roughly 37 million Switch units sold domestically against about 9.5 million for the PS4 — a staggering 28-million-unit gap. Even in cumulative worldwide shipments, Switch’s 155 million dwarfs PS4’s 115 million, and it’s fair to say most of that worldwide gap comes down to who won in Japan. With the current PS5 seeing sales decline even further, at this rate, within roughly just two years of launch, the newer Switch 2
Source: finance.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Same as how, because of train otaku (tetsu-ota), everyone except the photography-focused ones (tori-tetsu) still gets stuck with that creepy image.
What are you talking about — it's common knowledge that photo-train-otaku (tori-tetsu) are the worst offenders of all.
That's basically pollution at this point.
The free-to-play titles are Chinese games ripping off Japanese anime.
They're just not selling to Japanese people…
They're not even trying to sell here, and then people act surprised their presence has shrunk.
>Thanks to advances in technology, Switch 2 is now getting high-end 'AAA' software released for it,
>and there's no longer really a reason for users to deliberately choose 'PlayStation.'
Yep.
Analysis: looks like it's actually Steam that lost software sales because of Switch 2's arrival
PS5 Switch2 Steam FY26 software sales
145732 215439 37044 Dragon Quest VII Remake
207836 *65394 24320 Resident Evil Requiem
113175 *32252 16138 Onimusha: Way of the Sword
*68664 *27582 26260 Pragmata
*71698 *21134 *4359 Like a Dragon: Kiwami 3
*19659 *66107 10043 Monster Hunter Stories 3
**9542 *37488 13858 Honokurashi no Niwa (lit. "The Garden of a Modest Life")
000000 000000 178000 Meccha Chameleon (lit. "Totally Chameleon")
*PS/NS figures are physical (package) sales only
*Steam figures = worldwide sales (per Gamalytic) ÷ share of Japanese-language reviews
*Both the Famitsu and Gamalytic numbers are estimates
Well, it's the natural outcome of prioritizing their own ideology, so what can you do.
PS4 genuinely sold a ton, and its software sales back that up.
PS5's software isn't selling, and with scalpers in the mix, who knows how many units actually reflect real domestic demand.
Someone just said straight out the thing PlayStation fanboys have been desperately hiding.
What are the PS faithful gonna do about this now?
There's probably at least 5 million people in Japan who'll buy a home PlayStation purely because it's a PlayStation.
Though it'll be a disaster for Sony once that crowd finally dies out.
Neglecting casual users in particular must have really hurt them.
SIE probably figured, 'lol, casuals will just drift off to mobile games anyway, so Nintendo will naturally decline on its own.'
No matter how many warnings they got, they just laughed it off and called people idiots.
They held onto that same misreading for ten, twenty years, and never did a single thing about it.
Free-to-Play Station.
Honestly, even before this was rolled out, it had already fallen into 4-digit weekly sales and basically stopped selling — pretty sad state of affairs.
Then they swapped that story out for 'the future is overseas! Japan doesn't sell and has no growth left,' and dragged third parties along with it.
Basically, they twisted their own sales failure — the handheld strategy flopping — by force into something that sounded legitimate (when really, it just didn't sell).
Nintendo, noticing something was off… never made the mistake of neglecting Japan.
An estimate built by layering assumptions on top of published figures / the first-party vs. third-party breakdown includes unverified assumptions.
Does this graph actually mean anything?
In that sense, they're still being bailed out by Switch 2.
It's not even a decent copy — it's literally just a watered-down version that's "Japanese-language only" and nothing more.
No, people were saying like crazy, even before the PS5 launched, that Sony should do priority sales based on PSN purchase history the way they did in other countries.
Sony kept citing some vague legal excuse and put zero restrictions in place, not even at the Sony Store.
People kept saying 'you did it in other countries, so do it in Japan too,' but for two years Sony basically sold in a way that favored scalpers,
and PlayStation's loyal customers got completely fed up and walked away.
That's really the whole reason software sales collapsed so badly.
Reminds me of when they claimed, for the PS Mini, that they'd 'been planning it since before the Famicom Mini even came out.'
>As I've said before, I'm forecasting sales of 20 million units.
https://s.kabutan.jp/news/n202506180291/
Yeah, that's going to be pretty rough…
Yeah, Yasuda definitely isn't biased toward Nintendo.
His 'hardware-driven' theory, which underlies all his console forecasts, ruthlessly denies even Nintendo software's power to drive adoption.
In fact, Switch 2 wasn't blessed with as many first-year launch titles as the original Switch was, yet it's keeping a pace well ahead of Switch's.
Background and Key Points of the Debate
The figures behind the article are domestic sales (Switch at roughly 37 million units, PS4 at roughly 9.5 million) and cumulative worldwide shipments (Switch at 155 million, PS4 at 115 million), with the analysis being that most of the gap between the two stems from the sales difference within Japan specifically. On the thread, posters offered several non-converging theories for the cause, including “software lineup direction (dominated by Western titles and free-to-play games),” “pricing strategy (inadequate anti-scalping measures),” and “a fixed, aging user base.” As posts #65 and #72 point out, the methodology behind a separate chart showing overall market share itself rests on assumptions — a reminder to read the numbers underpinning this debate with some caution. The original article, for its part, was published amid an ongoing decline in PS5’s domestic sales, against the backdrop of the newer Switch 2 outselling PS5 at a faster pace.
*This article is an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Hardware/Industry, “Geha”) thread “Toyo Yasuda: Why PlayStation’s Presence Has Faded in Japan.”
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