Who Wants to Play? Survey Says Japan Luke Warm to Nintendo and Sony Game Consoles

We recently wrote that Nintendo (TYO:7974) reported its first loss in 30 years with sales of its major consoles struggling. Sony (NYSE:SNE) is having troubles too with its new PS Vita continuing to be outsold in Japan by its aging sibling, the PSP. The folks over at Goo Research [1] recently did a survey, asking over a thousand Japanese people whether they were interested in certain game consoles.

For the upcoming Nintendo Wii U, the results of this particular survey do not bode well:

PS Vita at 2011 Tokyo Game Show

• Only 7.1 percent say they want to buy it
• 33.5 percent say they don’t want to buy but are interested
• 59.4 percent say they don’t want to buy it at all

For Sony’s recently released PS Vita, the responses are even worse:

• Only 7.8 percent say that they want to buy it
• 31.7 percent say they don’t want to buy but are interested
• 60.5 percent say they don’t want to buy it at all

Looking at the actual weekly sales figures [2] for Japan since the PS Vita was announced (see interactive chart below), you can see that the PS Vita is Japan is practically flatlined. Of course, it looks better if you change the scale of the graph. But in comparison to better selling consoles of the past like the Nintendo DS or the PSP in its prime, the Vita is (ironically) showing few signs of life so far.