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Sunday Japan News Roundup: Nintendo, the US, bonuses and Aso’s economic plan

May 10, 2009
By Ken Worsley


A quick look at some of the big (and not so big) stories on Japan this past week:

First, BusinessWeek asks “Has Nintendo Peaked?” in an article published on Thursday. Essentially, the future worries center on whether or not Nintendo can continue to sell the number of Wii and DS consoles that it has over the past couple of years. Nintendo has done a great job getting people who usually would not buy video game consoles to make purchases, but could they run out of growth steam over the next year? The article points out that sales in Japan seem to be slowing, and that Sony’s Play Station 3 has outsold the Wii in both March and April of this year.

The Financial Times announced on Friday that “US belatedly learns lesson from Japan,” while Arnold Landy at Seeking Alpha published an article entitled “The U.S. Economy: Not a Repeat of Japan.” There has been plenty written on this topic already, and surely more to come as things continue to play out.

One story that really caught my eyes (yes, both of them) was the announcement that summer bonuses for Japan’s national civil servants would be cut by about 10% this year. The National Personnel Authority didn’t say it was having financial trouble meeting bonus commitments, but that it would cut bonuses for civil servants because private sector bonuses are also expected to fall this year. And the government is supposed to be looking at ways to boost consumer spending? If this was being done to cut down on government spending and help reduce the debt burden, I might be in agreement. The reason given, however, is just confusing. Still, there’s no need to feel too much sympathy for the bureaucrats - the average bonus for a 45 year old civil servant with a spouse and two children will come to about 1.5 million yen.

Xinhua asks “Will Aso’s new economic plan work?” One noteworthy paragraph:

An expanded financial policy has been embraced to boost Japan’s new industries to ensure their competitiveness in the global market. The Aso administration also plans to take effective measures to rebuild the Asian market so that it can reduce economic risks brought by its excessive economic dependence on the US.

Whether “decoupling” is actually impossible or historically too difficult is yet to be seen. Towards the end the article hits at what’s really behind this plan: “It is believed the policy stresses excessively on a long-term strategy and election tactics, instead of addressing necessary measures to tackle the financial crisis.”


Jun Okumura gives his thoughts on Japan ranking 34th out of the 43 “more developed countries” when it comes to the “best places to be a mother.”

There are now 4 confirmed cases of swine flu/pig flu/A(H1N1) flu/”the new flu strain” in Japan (most commonly being called 新型インフルエンザ (or 新型インフル for short) in the Japanese media).

Filed Under Business, Economics, Politics 

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Comments

3 Responses to “Sunday Japan News Roundup: Nintendo, the US, bonuses and Aso’s economic plan”

  1. Matt on May 11th, 2009 2:12 am

    I say fade Nintendo sales of the existing consoles. I’ve already purchased 4 Nintendo DS consoles for myself and family. I’m not going to purchase any more. I have a feeling that everyone who would buy a Nintendo Wii/DS, already has. The DSi is a piece of garbage (no GBA slot). Nintendo needs to come out with something completely new, in my opinion. I don’t cover Nintendo, so I could be wrong. It wouldn’t suprise me if software sales are Nintendo’s real money machine. If that’s the case, then with the number of consoles Nintendo has managed to move, they won’t be hurting.

    The PS3, on the other hand, is unpredictable. It still costs an arm + leg, and past sales were relatively poor. There is a lot of room for people to buy these, especially with the reasonable (finally) game library and slick online service. I’ve mentioned in the past that Sony turned itself into an extremely pro-cyclical company. Selling a premium console during a global recession might be harder than those of us with jobs think (games also seem to be very high for the PS3).

    The swine flu coverage is amusing. As far as I can tell, swine flu is no more deadly or contagious than the regular seasonal influenzas. It had a pretty nasty death toll in Mexico, but in developed nations, it seems to just make people really sick (the flu tends to do that).

    It kind of reminds me of SARs and the “avian flu” in years past. The media loves to place these end of the world plagues front and center.

  2. ROK Drop Weekly Linklets - May 10, 2009 | ROK Drop on May 11th, 2009 6:01 am

    […] Has Nintendo reached its peak? […]

  3. Ken Worsley on May 11th, 2009 8:59 am

    Matt, one thing you reminded me of is that the Japanese media refers to swine flue with the same name it referred to avain flu during the last panic: “New type influenza.” I meant to make that point in the post.

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