A friend of mine is a local manager for one of the largest game/DVD shops in Japan. I hung out with him for a bit today and he talked about the market a little. He says things are slowing down a bit after the big PS3 push from last year. The Wii is still dominating in hardware, followed by the DS, then the PS3, close behind is the PS2, and XBOX is still pretty far down the list. He says he sells maybe 1-3 XBOX consoles a month since they've been bundled in with Tales of Vesperia. In terms of software, PS2 often outsells PS3. The DS market is pretty saturated and his regional manager set the price for used items at 9,800 yen (about $100), which is also their buy price, mostly to clear out inventory. Looks like the DS market getting pretty saturated. He also mentioned he's having some problems with PSPs that have been modified to play emulation. His staff buys them used from customers without really checking the version, now he's stuck with a few v3.90 M33 units that Sony refuses to take back from the store. He can't sell them, so they're dead stock. I'll be getting those... Overall he's not very excited about the next year or so. Sales are probably going to be pretty flat or declining...
"He also mentioned he's having some problems with PSPs that have been modified to play emulation. His staff buys them used from customers without really checking the version, now he's stuck with a few v3.90 M33 units that Sony refuses to take back from the store. He can't sell them, so they're dead stock. I'll be getting those... " Tell him to install the latest firmware on them. You can overwrite a CFW PSP with a retail firmware and it will be back to normal. -- edit -- To be on the safe side. Create a pandora battery and matching memory card. In it you can reset a psp back to a reail fw with no left over custom firmware files in the unit. He can just run all the cfw psp he has with it and they will be back to retail units that he can sell. Making a pandora battery is really simple.
And he has been about the last 3? There's been a few hits, but considering there's been 3 new pieces of hardware, I can't think of any other word than "dud".
I m a happy camper actually. More than I was during the GC/Ps2/XBOX era I confess. Almost as good as the n64 days. It must be all the multiplayer my Wii gets nowadays
Yeah, I'm still pretty happy with my 360. I was at a shop today and they had Ninja Gaiden II for $30. Maybe I'm getting spoiled but I passed. I'm not really excited about any new titles coming out, but it's nice to know that I have a pretty good selection of used games in the $15 to $30 range nowadays.
