The Japanese video game market has not seen growth in a long time. A decline, mainly in stationary console sales, partially likely due to increased mobile gaming has seen video game sales decline with each of the last 11 years. A massive negative trend. A trend that was stopped last year, mainly due to the introduction of the Nintendo Switch.
Famitsu reports, that for the first time since 2006, both hardware and software console sales grew in 2017. The boost in hardware sales is particularly impressive, going from ¥117.05bn in 2016 to ¥202.37 in 2017, a growth of 73%.
While the boost in software is not as significant, there was still an increase of 4% in consumer spending on software.
Both of these boosts can mainly be attributed to the launch of the Nintendo Switch, as well as the exclusive software released on that platform.