i assume Sony is heavily serving the western market first this time due to many factors, but is Sony delaying it to give some Japanese developers time to have there games ready.
I noticed the yakuza series is very huge over there with yakuza 5 being the best seller last year, with Yakuza Ishin released at the same day of Japan PS4 launch is Sony working with Sega to make it a system seller?
I am still waiting for yakuza 5 to be localized but it seems i have to learn japanese now.
Japan's in the bag for Sony. No Microsoft console has ever sold there in any meaningful degree. By delaying the locked-in Japan till 2014, it lets Sony focus on the markets still under contention (USA, Europe). It's the same reason there are 'battleground states' in US elections. Plus, there are too few Japanese PS4 launch titles anyway.
Console gaming is dead Japan. It's all moved to handheld and (even more so) mobile gaming. Latest numbers for Lightning Returns are 250k in the first week compared to 1.5 million for the first FF. Granted you could argue the Lightning trilogy was an abomination but I can't remember the last console title that sold through 1 million plus in Japan.
Yakuza not being here faster is all Sega's fault. Sega has an amazingly bad track record of botching localization success this gen.
It's to not let Xbox get a head start this time. Many users (myself included) bought into Xbox last generation as they couldn't wait a year for the PS3, I ended up getting a PS3 around 6 months after it released here as I was enjoying the 360 until the 3rd RRoD. After that I looked at what the PS3 had to offer.