The 360's Japanese Status Revisited 68
Next Generation is reporting on more elements of the Xbox 360's presence in Japan. From the corporate side of things, the head of the Xbox division in Japan can be referred to as vaguely pessimistic. From the article: "Two RPGs from such a prolific fellow as Sakaguchi may strike a chord in Japan, but Microsoft will have to pull out even more tricks with the impending launch of the Wii and PS3, both of which Japan gamers favor over the Xbox brand. Right now, the Xbox 360 can't even make any headway sans next-gen competition. 'Globally we are doing very well but Japan has always been tough,' Huston admitted. 'We launched early and with not enough Japan-specific content.'" They're also running an article looking deeper into the situation, an examination from an outsider's perspective. From that article: "Mr. Huston has also commented that the 360 'launched early,' which is true in many senses of the word -- they launched before all their competitors, they launched early into the popularity of high-definition televisions in Japan, and they launched earlier than any good games. It was widely believed by Microsoft Japan that Dead or Alive 4 would save the system at launch, though really, how naive is that?"
I'll prolly get modded down but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'll prolly get modded down but... (Score:1)
No, it's the "Ron Obvious" Sketch.... (Score:1)
No, it's the Microsoft version of the Ron Obvious sketch:
http://www.orangecow.org/pythonet/sketches/jump.ht m [orangecow.org]
Ron Obvious Jumps across the english channel
Yep.... Still dead. (Score:5, Funny)
All the defibrillation in the world won't bring that sucker back to life.
Re:Yep.... Still dead. (Score:2)
All they have to do to make XBox 360 is Japan is bundle Duke Nukem Forever... oh wait.
Re:Yep.... Still dead. (Score:1)
If you sell fewer than 10 systems across the country for a week they should post the people's names that bought them too.
Re:Yep.... Still dead. (Score:2)
Re:Yep.... Still dead. (Score:1)
Maybe you can shed some light on how they're dropping the ball in Japan. Are they not making games that fit the Japanese tastes? Did they botch their marketing? or what? A number of Slashdot users assume it's 'Nationalism' and they don't buy X-box simply because it's Am
Re:Yep.... Still dead. (Score:2)
In my opinion, because those who would have the side money, are not any more the ones who would buy and xbox if they already have a ps2. Most of them use their mobile phone for gameing. Second, those who are nerdy enought to perhaps b
Re:Yep.... Still dead. (Score:1)
I think that you're wrong when you claim that the masses want innovation. I say that the masses want next gen graphics and the nex
Re:Yep.... Still dead. (Score:2)
It's getting beat by the original GBA (and that thing is a POS). The 360 is actually doing pretty well (much better then I thought it would be anyways).
Why no staged rollout? (Score:4, Interesting)
Being first to market doesn't guarantee success, and often allows your competitors to learn from your mistakes. Even if MS had a killer line up of Japanese games coming, they now have to fight against a negative perception.
Re:Why no staged rollout? (Score:3, Insightful)
The one thing I couldn't understand is in all the interviews with higher ups involved with the Xbox line was they always said "The Xbox failed in japan because there wasn't enough Japan-centric games, nothing was made for that region. We have learned from this though and the Xbox 360 will have more Japan-centric games"
So they launch worldwide and what is the selection of games japan has? All American & European centric games, not one that would appeal to the Japan crowd. Yet they kept pushi
Re:Why no staged rollout? (Score:1)
However, I agree with you that Microsoft counting on only this to save their system is a really stupid idea. Whatsmore, the Final Fantasy games generally lose to the Dragon Quest / Dragon Warrior ones in Japan. Microsoft needs to start listeni
Re:Why no staged rollout? (Score:1)
But it works so well just to tell them in America!
Re:Why no staged rollout? (Score:1)
Failing to release it in Japan would have left gamers with the impression that Microsoft wasn't commited to Japan. It would have been an insult to all of the Japaneese devs they've been courting to develop Japaneese content. And finally, they need every extra second of a lead they can get over Sony to establish some sort of presence in the Japaneese market.
They were damned either way (Score:2)
Even if MS had a killer line up of Japanese games coming, they now have to fight against a negative perception.
Whereas if they'd waited until they had a great lineup of (they thought) Japan-friendly titles, they'd have somehow been stiffing the Japanese market, and they'd have that negative perception to overcome.
They were already in a hole. In order to get out of it they'd have had to try something different that would bring them back to the attention of potential buyers. They tried more of the same,
It's a cultural thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Even if we wipe the slate clean, and a new American company comes out with a system in Japan, and it had some interesting games for that market, the mere fact that it's American causes some contempt among the Japanese. To put it in other terms, this is like asking why Toyotas don't sell better amongst American UAW union workers. Or why France doesn't have a major California wine festival. From my understanding of speaking with people who live(d) in Japan, there is a very big sense of nationalism with video games, more so than in any other country. The three superpowers of the last two decades, Sony, Sega and Nintendo, were all Japanese. It is almost offensive to suggest to a Japanese customer that Microsoft could do a better job than the homegrown heroes.
Simply put, the deck was stacked against Microsoft from the very beginning.
This is not to say that Microsoft is at a complete loss with the 360 in Japan, but certainly some of those resources could be better used at launching that console more strongly in other markets where this console xenophobia may not exist. Maybe India. Maybe it's China. Or Korea. Maybe it's another country. (Look at the estimated makeup of internet-connected Xbox 360 owners around the globe [fantasticdamage.com]). My guess is Blizzard is not focusing on Japan as WoW's third biggest market.
It would take some amazing feat, like Zelda, Biohazard and Dragonquest all launching only on the next Xbox, for Microsoft to be anywhere near the top in Japan. That's not going to happen, so you need to focus your resources where they are best spent. And it's not Japan.
If that seems depressing, think of the executives in Japan that can't seem to understand why dating sims and DOA-based patchinko games aren't automatic big sellers here. I don't think they're losing much sleep over it.
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:5, Interesting)
That must be why the Sony MP3 player is trouncing Apple's iPod in Japan.
Wait a second, no it's not. I'm really sick of armchair cultural studies. The entire time I lived in Japan, people picked items based on their percieved quality and/or hipness. I was in Japan for the Xbox360 launch - there was no reaction in Den Den Town. The thing is considered un-hip and bulky. Not because it's American, but because it sucks. The iPod is stylish. The Xbox360 is a lame copy of Apple style. Any Japanese with enough disposable income to pick them up (and I know, my girlfriend bought a nano and helped me buy a couple of DS Lites) would probably pick up on that and base some of their purchasing desicion around it. That's based on all the 20-somethings I knew.
It wasn't that it wasn't American (do you think 10 year old kids care if the XBOX is American? They don't - they just know their favorite series is on the Nintendo DS or that all their friends have one).
That doesn't mean all American products are treated the same way. Dells tend to sell, as well as the iPod and Apple's computers. Sony's MP3 player, on the other hand, is doing nearly as badly there as it is here. American movies, American TV shows, American books are all popular. But any time some half-baked American product fails to make a splash in Japan, it's because the Japanese have "contempt" (read: racism) towards it.
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:1)
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:1)
The ipods success in Japan versus the xbox's lack there of has to do with the fact that there has not been a historical dominance in portable mp3 players by japanese companies. Furthermore, there is nothing culturaly distinctive between a Japanese made mp3 player and an American one where as there are substancial differences between games made and p
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:3, Interesting)
No, but Japanese have a long tradition of manufacturing audio products.
But the real reason the iPod has been such a success is that Apple is more Japanese-y than Sony, in terms of industrial design. Jobs and Ives both get it.
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:1)
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:1, Flamebait)
Thats as much crap as any cultural examination the previous poster made.
I believe both of you are wrong. The first poster indicated his judgement is based on the fact the Japanese dislike America and therefore American products. You are suggesting the Japanese are superior in there judgemen
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:2)
You might be right that it's kind of a copy of the iPod style, but, then again, so are Sony laptops and I'm sure those are selling in Japan. My personal take is that the Xbox does poorly in Japan partly because it doesn't have (as much of) the type of game genres that are popular i
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:2)
Only if the Japanese are even dumber than we are. Vaios are built like shit. They have nice bells and whistles but absolutely no durability and build quality that would make even apple laugh.
We got a Vaio with a core duo and nvidia graphics in here and it failed after like two weeks. Pretty sad.
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:2)
It's probably one of those fanatic things, though, like how some sarimen collect golf gear but rarely, if ever, play 18 holes of golf.
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:2)
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:2)
One more thing (Score:3, Interesting)
And at the end, its all about the games. Why would anyone buy a new console, if he/she can get the same games for the PS2 which is already in their homes. Most of them are casual games, and none of them are online RPG playes.
Third, the biggest craze in Japan are "brain train games". Both top
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:2, Informative)
With regards to Microsoft's uphill battle in Japan, there is an interesting interview with Tom Kalinske [sega-16.com] (former head of Sega's US division) about how he managed Sega from only a 1% market share in the US to 50% in just 4 years. Perhaps MS can learn some tips.
Whose contempt was that again? (Score:2)
Or why France doesn't have a major California wine festival.
California wines rank quite highly in contests held in France, and have for decades now. I know of at least three "sister city" relationships that celebrate the connection.
Culture is nowhere near as simple as your ideas about contempt, and your stereotypes are inaccurate as far as my own experiences go. My experience of French people (Parisians mostly) is that they're by and large extremely soft-spoken, humorous, and unfailingly polite. (They
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Your assertions are both simplistic and false. Japan has no real bias against American technology firms, nor American companies in general. The American concept of "pop culture" dictates a lot of what is popular in Japan, and the Japanese have no hate for American driven culture in the public sense.
Point and case: the iPod has been wildly successful in Japan, and is the number one selling MP3 player in Japan by a wide margin, despite the fact that Apple is VERY much an American company.
The problem for Microsoft is two-fold:
1. They don't understand the Japanese consumer. Japanese consumers are VERY different from American consumers. American consumers, more often than not, follow one of two basic buying templates: they buy based on hype, or they buy based on function. Japanese consumers, generally speaking, buy on these three principals, in this order: 1. Brand (has this company sold quality products in the past) 2. Form & Community (Will it look cool wearing it/Will I easily be able to use this with other people I know) 3. Function (Does it have all of the features I am looking for).
Microsoft fails all three counts drastically with the 360, which brings me to the second problem for Microsoft.
2. Microsoft faces a very negative connotation in Japan. Most Japanese people see Windows for what it is: a bulky, bloated, lazy piece of insecure code that isn't worth a fourth as much as Microsoft charges for it, and only survives because of strongarm techniques and an active monopoly.
The Japanese people resent this; nearly as much as the average slashdotter.
So the problem is not that American companies face negative connotations, it's that Microsoft does, and it doesn't help that Microsoft entered a field that where TWO other companies have all three important consumer points in Japan.
So next time you see that the Japanese consumer passed by a display of 30 X360's to buy a DS, don't tag it to racism. Just cry more noob.
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:1)
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:2)
It's important to point out though that from what I've heard, the few Japanese who did pick up the original XB enjoyed it, and highly recommended it.
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:2)
Last time I looked, the Camry was the best-selling car in America, and a Californian wine took best of show at a majo
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:1)
Replace "American" with "Microsoft" and this sentence might be more in tune with reality. Heck, I'm not Japanese, and I feel the same way as they do about the X-Box360. Huge controller with tiny buttons aside, my problem wasn't with the technological side of the console. I just didn't li
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:2)
"Contempt?" If there were contempt against American products or American culture, they wouldn't be giving us all these humorous Engrish phrases; you know, the ones they try to use to seem more American, because they think acting like an American is cool?
"To put it in other terms, this is like asking why Toyotas don't sell better amongst American UAW union workers."
Employee discounts?
"Or why France doesn't have a major California wi
Re:It's a cultural thing (Score:1)
It was a spin-off of some part of the army that was there to make stuff to entertain the troops.
Makes it hard to buy a 360 in the US too (Score:3, Interesting)
The PS3 is looking even better in that regard as I believe the US and Japan are supposed to be in the same region as far as games go - no more chipping to play games from Japan directly.
I don't know how, but Microsoft really needs to work much harder to get some Japanese studio support or they will have long-term problems in other countries, not just Japan.
Re:Makes it hard to buy a 360 in the US too (Score:2)
Yes, and for the price of a functional used car, you too can own one with a couple of games and a second controller! And maybe even a faux-burlwood faceplace! TEH WIN!
Re:Makes it hard to buy a 360 in the US too (Score:2)
Re:Makes it hard to buy a 360 in the US too (Score:2)
Well, it's nice to have that kind of Disposable income - it's been a while for me, but I do remember. However, most people do not. You are in a teensy, tiny, almost statistically insignificant majority. Most people do not spend $1200 (plus the display!) just on graphics output.
Shit, my whole super duper pooper scooper laptop system setup (HP Core Duo laptop with a 17"
Re:Makes it hard to buy a 360 in the US too (Score:2)
If you're going to complain about a $100 price difference in consoles and that price difference is gone in two games, how many games are you planning to play? Three?
Assuming you'll buy a dozen or more games for either system over the long run, the price difference isn't there -- its about quality. I think Sony's got it right; price it high for ear
Re:Makes it hard to buy a 360 in the US too (Score:2)
On the other hand, Sony is totally unabased about the cost. Who says they'll lower it any time soon? They publically announced that "they" thought it was probably "too cheap". Well, I disagree, suckas. Also, it is about Quality. Quality is about fitness, which for me is based on longetivity and interoperability. Sony's record on hardware durability is horrible. Their record on interoperability is worse.
Granted, I will probably buy one if there is a credible linux distribution... But then it's worth a lo
Re:Makes it hard to buy a 360 in the US too (Score:2)
b) I bought a later generation PS2 and it has lasted very well. Never buy initial releases of new hardware technology.
c) I play dozens of games on my PS2 and its really amazing what can be done with 32MB of RAM.
See: God of War, Black, etc.
Re:Makes it hard to buy a 360 in the US too (Score:2)
Yes. That doesn't mean they'll give us all the libraries that we need to actually utilize the hardware, just as they didn't on the PS2, which at least used Linux as the development system.
Lots of PSTwos have died on people too, though. (I too have a PSTwo now.)
MS dont get it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Best example is from 2channel a few months back, Bandai announced Gundam Gashapon wars. Featuring a truck load of fan favour robots which hadn't been seen in a game since the SNES era. The forum post had about 50 people going "I would of bought it, but it's on the gamecube so I'll pass" or bitching about it being on the gamecube.
Japan doesn't like the Xbox, it doesn't matter what games they put on it, it just won't compete with the DS and the PS2 currently. When the PS3 comes out and the Wii, it will be the next Gamegear/Lynx/Your dead console of choice here.
Re:MS dont get it. (Score:2)
Newsflash: Sony lures Final Fantasy VII away from the N64. Japanese consumers drop the Sega Saturn like a bad habit.
Re:MS dont get it. (Score:1)
Yeah but you can see where they are coming from at least. I mean, just think what might have become of the Xbox had Halo never happened.
Sony got something right (sort of) (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure there are some great games coming up, but MS needs to convince them that this is not a "one off" thing. Sony's chief exec said that the PS3 is about potential, and he's right. When a gamer buys a console, they look for a system that will provide the desired experience now... and years down the road.
I don
Re:Sony got something right (sort of) (Score:1)
I'll allow that I might be missing something but I really don't see any of this "potential" that you're refering to in the PS3 above and beyond the potential in the 360.
Re:Sony got something right (sort of) (Score:1)
People call the Japanese arrogant or racist for their insistance on wanting products localized into Japanese, yet would they purchase something that didn't include English instructions and had an English description on the packaging? Stupid double s
Dead or Alive 4? Not exactly... (Score:1)
Microsoft was almost right. Watch the Xbox360 sales go up a notch when Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 [tecmo.co.jp] is released. Go download [ign.com] the trailer, it's worth it.
Re:Dead or Alive 4? Not exactly... (Score:2)
There is no xBox in Japan (Score:2)
PS2. Well at least more than half of the area. PSP, DS, Game Cube take rest. Tip of the hot game. On PSP and DS the top sellers are brain train games. I don't know for the PS2, but I guess some RPG. xbox 360, nobody cares.
And know someting completly different. Get Loco Roco, that game kicks ass (PSP)