Japanese Game Market Shrinks 10.5% in First Half of Fiscal '09

According to the latest report from Famitsu publisher Enterbrain (as translated by Kotaku), the video game market in the land of the rising sun continues to face year-over-year declines. For the first half of the 2009 fiscal year (March 31 through September 28), hardware sales in Japan fell 15.1 percent while software sales dipped 7.5 percent.

As you might expect, Square Enix's Dragon Quest IX was the top selling game for the period with 3.92 million copies. This was followed by Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver (2.06 million), Wii Sports Resort (1.19 million), Tomodachi Collection (1.15 million) and Monster Hunter 3 (908,693 copies).

In terms of hardware, the handheld market easily outpaced consoles, as the DS (DSi and DS Lite) sold around 1.7 million units (27.85 million life-to-date) and the PSP sold 813,604 units (12.6 million life-to-date). As for consoles, the Wii and PS3 were remarkably close in sales, likely thanks to a late surge by PS3 following the price cut. Nintendo's Wii sold 594,398 units (8.5 million life-to-date), which was only slightly ahead of PS3's 581,676 units (3.59 million life-to-date). The Xbox 360 sold just 137,059 units (1.14 million life-to-date).

The Japanese game industry has been in trouble for a few years now while Western markets have seen much growth. The recently concluded Tokyo Game Show saw the lowest attendance in four years, and Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune went so far as to say that the Japanese game industry is "finished."