Japanese interest in gaming on the decline

Poll shows 30 per cent fewer people consider themselves gamers compared to a year ago
New research from Japan’s Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association suggests that the number of people in Japan who consider themselves to be gamers has reduced significantly in the last year.
The organisation polled over 1,000 individuals aged between three and 79. The number that claimed to be gamers had dropped by 30.3 per cent compared to when the same poll was run in 2007.
Kotaku calculates that in broader terms, this means there are six million fewer gamers in the country now than there were a year ago.
Of those who said they did not consider themselves gamers, the most common reason was simply a lack of interest in gaming with the second most common response being that there were other things people would rather do.
The results back up 2008’s market figures which showed that despite ongoing growth in regions such as the UK and North America, the Japanese video games market is in steep decline, shrinking 15 per cent last year.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/33726/Japa...on-the-decline

They just finished playing all the games worth playing that's all.

Yeah, but that is based upon the opinions of 1000 people. DS is still selling like hotcakes though. And with DQ IX on the way, I doubt it will slow down.

A sample of 1000 people is not unusual, I work for a market research company, most surveys in germany are based on a sample 500-1000 people.
I think the numbers match, if you compare them to the decline in sales over the last year. I haven't looked it up, but my guess is, if you sum up the Top Ten sales for the months January, February and March 2009 and compare them with 2008 you see that fewer games are sold. It would be interesting to see if sales dropped by 30% too.