Monday
Oct072013
The Decline of Fighting Games on Consoles in Japan
BY 
AAK ON Monday, October 7, 2013 at 11:00PM
AAK ON Monday, October 7, 2013 at 11:00PM 
This isn't directly Tekken related but I felt this was a fascinating compilation of info that deserves to be shared and spread. GamesCharts.fr posted an article last month graphing the sales of respective fighting games throughout the years and the results are flabberghasting.
Thank you to The_lascar for the heads up.
tagged Capcom, Fighting Games, Japan, Namco, SNK, Sega in Sales, Soul Calibur, news, street fighter, tekken
Capcom, Fighting Games, Japan, Namco, SNK, Sega in Sales, Soul Calibur, news, street fighter, tekken 
Reader Comments (12)
Japan- who needs em anyways?
@vor
Everyone who doesn't want to be stuck with NRS fighting games.
So much for blaming consoles for the decline of their arcades. What the hell are they playing anyway? Definitely not fighting games...
it was a joke.
Everyone in Japan just plays hand held consoles.... SERIOUSLY.
Tekken still performs like a boss.
Aren't game sales in general down?
But yeah, look at tekken, it's been nearly the same since 5. Bounds? Nothing but a combo extender. Not to mention some of the launchers to which cause the damage, which some can only be lightly punished.
100+ launcher combo/30+ pts punish. Some wonder why this game is dying.
Why play the same game on console that you can play in the arcade anyway?
Because arcades are dead in most countries, that's why.
Sorry but being both hard to learn and master (which almost all fighting games are with the possible exception of smash bros) is a really outdated design. Gaming is moving towards easy to learn (not even necessarily hard to master) and there isn't really a place for a steep learning curve anymore.
Yeah, it's like mankind in general gets dumber and dumber with each year passing.
In that context, hard to learn videogames, and I'd say just about any things in life that require brain skills to work with are gonna have a hard time finding their place in society.
These numbers aren't surprising at all. Consider how many more people had those older game systems.
For example, more people had PS1 than they did PS2. More people have PS2 than they do PS3. Even fewer people will own the PS4. The sales numbers will not match the 90s because the same number of people don't have the game systems.
Also, lets not forget how much cheaper games were. I bought Tekken 3 brand new for $20. I bought Tekken Tag for $40. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 cost $60. That's a lot more money. Even when you index the price change for inflation it's still much more expensive. Maybe, just maybe...developers would sell more copies if they lowered the price. TTT2 at $40 would have been a lot more attractive to people. It's not like people don't want to play, but everyone does not have steep pockets. That's why Tekken Revolution got those 2 million downloads. DOA5U sure didn't get 2 million downloads.
People clearly like Tekken, but not everyone can afford to shell out $60 every time a new game drops.