Japan, which is more game crazy than the United States, suffered its first downturn in the video game market last year, with sales shrinking 15 percent from a year earlier, according to the Agence France-Presse news service.

The market was down about $9.6 billion dollars largely because no new gaming consoles or console updates were released, analysts say. 2007 received a boost because Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii were released late in 2006 over there, and the sales surge they created carried over.

But sales of games themselved dropped about 8 percent last year, much of that occurring in the later months when the world economy began its downturn.

This came even as analysts were reasonably certain that game sales would remain steady as more people try to save money by entertaining themselves at home

Japan has led the way in video game trends worldwide much of this decade. Consequently, popularity of games and consoles often has matched performance over there — the notable exception being PlayStation 3’s broader popularity over Xbox 360. Microsoft sold only 318,000 Xboxes in Japan last year; Sony sold 991,000 PS3s, according to Japanese magazine publisher Enterbrain.

Meanwhile, Nintendo’s Wii dominates sales in both countries.

So, if gaming suffers a downturn over there, expect something like that to happen over here. The mood to pinch pennies may be too strong for even gaming to overcome, especially if market analysts are correct in predicting that we’re not yet through the worst of the downturn.