Tough times for the Japanese gamesbiz, where calamitous sales have resulted in a 24% decline in market value compared to this time last year.

New figures published by Enterbrain track market performance for the period from December 29th 08 to June 28th 09 and paint a particularly dismal picture for both hardware and game sales. The former comes out the worse for wear, plummeting by 27.6% year-on-year. However software sales aren’t too far behind, dropping 21.8%. It all makes the British games market’s decline of 5.7% seem rather benign, doesn’t it.

All of the above aside, the sort of numbers still achieved in the Japanese market would be semi-miraculous in any other territory. Take hardware sales, where the DS continues to dominate, having shifted 1.62 million units during the first six months of 09 – the second-placed PSP isn’t too scruffy either, at 1.18m. After that the Wii leads the home console race at 640,000 units, then it’s 550,000 for the PS3 and 210,000 for the Xbox 360.

So what’s going on? Well, the global credit crunch for starters, although others have speculated that the lack of AAA software releases is also to blame. We’d also point to the yawning chasm separating portable and home console sales. From the looks of it Japanese gamers just aren’t getting this whole next-gen thing. Maybe the arrival of Final Fantasy XIII later this year will help bring them up to speed.