The head of one of Nintendo's second-party studios expresses concern for the portable games market in Japan...

Manabu Yamana, the CEO of Japanese studio Genius Sonority, has expressed fear over the future of dedicated games machines. Reflecting on 2011 in the Japanese games market, Yamana said "[i]t was an end of the year that made me feel once again that we're not in the era where you can survive only on consumer games."

Yamana's worries come shortly after sales of Sony's new PlayStaion Vita plummeted to just 72,000 in its second week, and during the biggest week of the year. However, Yamana clearly feels that Nintendo's 3DS is not in a much safer position, as while the system has passed four million units in Japan, he felt disappointed that it did not reach five million by the end of the year. "Imagining the future that this present suggests, it looks like there will be a lot to think about over New Years", he opined.

Despite this, Nintendo's official stance can afford to be a little more upbeat. The 3DS crossing four million units in December should prove to buoy the company, who predicted the figure to be achieved by the end of February. The system also enjoyed the biggest December ever in Japan, according to Famitsu's current tracking (however, it fell a little short of this record in Media Create's tracking).

Genius Sonority is a second-party studio founded by Nintendo to create Pokémon spin-off games. The company developed Pokémon Colosseum and its sequels.