PS4 Continues To Struggle And Fail Against Wii U In Japan

It appears as if the console war isn't quite going in the direction a lot of people may have assumed. Nintendo is now dominating Japan hand-over-fist. Sony has the rest of the world in its coffers and Microsoft is still trying to find their place. One thing that has been made obvious is that Nintendo's lead in Japan doesn't appear to be in any kind of jeopardy from Sony... at all.

According to GamesIndustry.biz, some new market data made available by Enterbrain – and appropriately translated by Dr Serkan Toto – reveals that Japan's first half of 2014 only managed to pull in ¥70.63 billion. It's a small increase over the same period from last year, but not by much. Why? Well, a lot of it has to do with the under-performing sales of the PS4.

GI.biz notes that Media Create's reports have steadily kept the PS4 moving, on average, around 10,000 units a week. But the story is even more dire than that. The last Media Create report from Nintendo Everything has put the Wii U at around 10,653 for the week ending on June 29th, where-as the PlayStation 4 only managed to move 8,059 SKUs within the same time frame.

That number isn't a discrepancy or an anomaly. Those numbers represent a chronic and consistent trend that has been going on since earlier this year, shortly after the PS4 launched in Japan back in February.

The trend really kicked into high-gear leading close to the launch of Mario Kart 8, where the Wii U began to skyrocket away from the PS4 on the weekly charts.

By the time Mario Kart 8 had launched, the Wii U was no longer considered a “dying” system and the roles had reversed when the weekly chart numbers started coming in.

In fact, just recently, it was noted by Nintendo Enthusiast that senior research analyst David Gibson revealed that Mario Kart 8 managed to move more than 500,000 SKUs in Japan during the month of June, according to a Famitsu report.

Those impressive numbers for Mario Kart 8 have been a heaven-send for Nintendo, as their console had previously been struggling to maintain pace all before its release. What's more is that this has continued to keep the Wii U ahead of the PS4, despite the fact that Sony had previously released inFamous: Second Son, a PS4 exclusive, over in Japan to very little fanfare.

The PlayStation 4's hot burst onto the Eastern scene and quick decline could be worrying. While GI.biz notes that the overall Japanese market's video game industry is in decline, the PS4 is still trailing behind the Wii U by a sizable margin.

Many gamers have estimated that the sales could increase for Sony's fourth generation console with more Eastern-centric gaming titles that appeal more to the tastes of the Japanese gaming audience. Of course, these games seem to be coming far and few so early in the life-cycle of the PS4, making it difficult for the system to leverage momentum over their Nintendo rival.