CESA reports on the state of Japan

The Japanese games industry trade body, the Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association (CESA), has released its annual white paper outlining the performance of the market in Japan, revealing a significant decline in the region.

Overall shipments of software and hardware from Japanese companies reached 1.26 trillion Yen (â'¬9.2 billion) in 2002, a fairly major drop from the 1.45 trillion Yen (â'¬10.6 billion) figure in 2001. Of this, some 389 billion Yen (â'¬2.8 billion) was made up of shipments within Japan itself.

Breaking down the figures further reveals that the most significant decline was down to lower revenues from hardware sales - which fell from 940 billion Yen (â'¬6.9 billion) in 2001 to 788 billion Yen (â'¬5.7 billion) in 2002. This drop is attributed at least partially to the price cuts of the current-generation systems, and the sharp decline of sales of previous generation consoles such as the PSone.

However, software sales were also in decline in 2002, dropping off from 517 billion Yen (â'¬) to 475 billion Yen - a figure which may have been influenced by another odd factor noted by the CESA, namely the dwindling population of gamers in Japan. According to statistics in the report, the number of Japanese people describing themselves as "regular" gamers is down from 25.5 million in 2001 to 23.6 million in 2002. That's still nearly a quarter of the population, but the decline is worrying, and seemingly difficult to explain.

There are still growth areas in the Japanese industry, however, mostly notably networked games - which clocked up some 2.6 million players in 2002, representing nearly 10 per cent of the Japanese gaming population - and mobile games, which had 6.04 million players, aided no doubt by the more advanced Japanese iMode phone system and the extremely cheap data tariffs on their phone networks.

The full CESA report is a 214 page publication which is available from the organisation directly - www.CESA.or.jp.