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NEWS: Sony Halts PlayStation 4 Production in Japan Except for Jet Black Slim Model

Feel like that's a bit soon considering the ps5 hasn't been out that long and also because a lot can't get one at the moment. Maybe that's different in Japan.

You're not the only one. Yeah, ever since PS4's later launch in Japan (remember PS4 launched in Japan several months after it's launched in NA and Europe) , I've started to noticed Sony not taking their Japanese market seriously like they were back during the PS2 and the early era of PS3. Also the fact that Sony's video game headquarter moved from Tokyo to San Mateo, California is another evidence that Sony is not taking the Japanese market like it used to.

Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute in Tokyo. "Sony’s attention is drifting away and fans have started to notice that.”

Sony has placed more importance on the U.S. market after the PlayStation 4’s disappointing performance in Japan, according to employees who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.

Global sales of the PS4 rose to more than 113 million from the PS3’s 87 million, according to Sony data. But the console sold fewer than 10 million units in Japan, less than its predecessor, according to Famitsu, a Japanese video game magazine. The U.S., meanwhile, accounts for 35% of the video game unit’s revenue, compared with 10% for Japan, according to Macquarie Group Ltd. analyst Damian Thong.

A senior figure inside PlayStation headquarters in San Mateo, California, said the U.S. side was frustrated by the failure of the Japan marketing team to sell as many PlayStation 4 units as expected. The person asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.

As a result, Japan has been sidelined in planning the PS5’s promotion, according to several PlayStation staff in Japan. Employees in Tokyo said they have been left awaiting instructions from California.

Japan-based developer support teams have been reduced by as much as a third from their peak, and the rolling contracts of a number of game creators at PlayStation’s Japan Studio, one of the unit’s oldest in-house software ateliers, have not been renewed, former employees said. The U.S. office believes the PlayStation business does not need games that only do well in Japan, employees in the California headquarters said.

Local retailers said they have not received many more first-batch PS5 units than they did of the PlayStation 3, which had a limited initial production run.

"It’s analyst consensus that PlayStation no longer sees the Japan market as important,” Morningstar Research analyst Kazunori Ito said. "If you want to know their take on the Japanese market, you need to ask about it because otherwise Sony wouldn’t talk about it.”