Games For the 360's Japanese Comeback 78
Next Generation has an article looking at games that could save the Xbox 360 in Japan. Despite Microsoft's best efforts, the console is still puttering along with lackluster sales. Even with the country's diminished interest in the PS3, the 360 needs some big-name titles to get it back into the minds of Japanese consumers. From the article: "Blue Dragon is set up to be another stick of dynamite with Toriyama's name written on it, though how willing casual fans will be to pick it up depends entirely on its advertising campaign. In America, it's becoming a simple enough strategy to put a demo of something on Xbox Live and let it spread through word of mouth. This is not so possible in Japan, mostly because most people here don't have an Xbox 360. Polls for months have indicated that the majority of casual gamers would reserve their judgment of the 360 for when they could play Sakaguchi's games."
What a crock... (Score:1)
Re:What a crock... (Score:1, Funny)
~nate
Re:What a crock... (Score:1)
Re:What a crock... (Score:5, Informative)
You don't need to be pro-Sony in order to read a sales chart. Here are last week's console sales, for one example:
Nintendo DS Lite - 153,566
PSP - 25,935
PS2 - 23,133
Nintendo DS - 3,504
Game Boy Advance SP - 2,919
X360 - 1,897
Game Boy Micro - 1,443
GameCube - 1,002
Game Boy Advance - 17
Xbox - 8
The DS lite sold around 80 times more units than the Xbox 360. The 6 year old PS2 sold more than ten times as many units.
This is not going to change, ever. It's over, unless you can name one case in the history of game consoles where a year after launch, after languishing completely out of public consciousness for so long and so far behind the competition, a console has come roaring back to be a success. In any territory, much less Japan. It just doesn't happen. Places can change, a company that's in 1st place and slip to 2nd and vice versa, but never can a console just be so totally out of the popular culture and ever hope to challenge the big boys.
This talk of "comeback" is a misnomer as well, because it implies that the situation was different at some point. In order to have a comeback, you have to have been popular before. That's not the case with the 360 in Japan. The 360 in Japan just has no place in popular consciousness - it's not that people hate it, it's that they just don't think about it. You can't reverse perceptions (a "comeback") if there's no perception to reverse. The 360 just isn't considered. And it's not for lack of marketing, either - MS has spent plenty of money on ads, to no avail.
Re:What a crock... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What a crock... (Score:1)
Re:What a crock... (Score:1)
So technically is IS a comeback, up until you match the other team's score.
Along the lines of: "And Team Y was was leading 3-1, but in a surprise comeback, X scored twice late in the third period, then went on to win it 4-3 in the overtime"
Re:What a crock... (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, the Nintendo DS itself has had somewhat of a resurgence. If you look at the weekly charts, the DS had a strong launch, but was slowly declining to PSP-level sales. Then, around the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006, it really started to catch on.
See: http://vgcharts.org/japconscomps.php?name1=DS&type =0 [vgcharts.org]
It's really hard to predict where cultural phenome
Re:What a crock... (Score:1)
And to address the "crappy RPG" comment, it's Japan. You might want to re-think that logic.
Re:What a crock... (Score:1)
Re:What a crock... (Score:1)
I was with you right up to this point AC. I agree with you in part - in that the rootkit has very nothing to do with the PSx. (I'm really sick about all the whining about the rootkit when the PS3 gets mentioned.)
However, my main problem with Sony is that the content side of the business is exerting too much influence on the hardware side. Sony seem to be embracing
Re:H-games is what they'll need (Score:1)
Incorrect title (Score:3, Interesting)
First off, you can't "come back" when you never "came" to begin with. The most the 360 can hope for in Japan is to rise to acceptability from abject failure.
Second off, remember 99 Nights? This was the first one of the "zomg for Japan!!" games the 360 got. It, too, was supposed to finally catch the attention of Japanese consumers and be the comeback point that kickstarted the 360's Japanese career. It bombed. Afterwards, the Americans who'd been talking about how excited Japan supposedly was for 99 Nights quietly dropped the subject. Now, Blue Dragon has better chances than 99 Nights ever did. But I still don't think its fate is going to be all that different from 99 Nights.
Third, you realize that although this Sakaguchi guy came up with the basic game design, and the music was done by a famous Square veteran, the actual game being made by Artoon? The people who made Blinx. Blinx. Blinx! If the mere involvement of Sakaguchi in one game is supposed to be enough to save the XBox 360 from the brink of extinction, then the involvement of Artoon in that same game should be enough to sink it again.
Microsoft's Japan strategy is more about America than it is about Japan. It's first off about providing some "Japanese-y" games for Microsoft's American customers to play, and second off about allowing pro-XBox 360 bloggers (like Zonk) to write endlessly about how the XBox 360 is going to do really well in Japan. It's absolutely clear and effortless to see that the XBox 360 is not doing really well in Japan, that the XBox 360 is doing even worse in Japan than the original XBox, but as long as the bloggers keep up the smokescreen it doesn't look that way if you're thousands of miles away in America and aren't actually paying attention...
MSoft should just let Sony dig it's own grave. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:MSoft should just let Sony dig it's own grave. (Score:2)
Only complete morons with nothing better to do are screaming about that one. Some people just like to scream about things, so they'll use any excuse, however flimsy. But yeah, Sony fucked up on the rest.
Re:MSoft should just let Sony dig it's own grave. (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.geocities.jp/route_219a/flash/ps3_exp02 eng.html [geocities.jp]
http://blog.wired.com/games/index.blog?entry_id=14 93740 [wired.com]
http://dokoaa.com/ps3wii.html#hikaku [dokoaa.com]
Re:MSoft should just let Sony dig it's own grave. (Score:1)
I am personally very excited by this development. If Sony succeeds, they should finally meet their goal of being hated by everyone!
Re:MSoft should just let Sony dig it's own grave. (Score:2)
I am personally very excited by this development. If Sony succeeds, they should finally meet their goal of being hated by everyone!"
You had left off the parts where Sony will review all games as a 10
Re:MSoft should just let Sony dig it's own grave. (Score:2)
Comeback implies you were there .... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is, what
It doesn't sound like they'd be making a re-surgence or anything like that, since they never surged in the first place.
Re:I don't know if anyone noticed but.... (Score:1)
You americans have such large.... (Score:3, Funny)
They've just got controller envy.
I welcome our new chinpokomon overlords
Whaa? (Score:2)
I think you're confusing Japan with the US.
Re:Whaa? (Score:2)
Re:Couldn't the answer really be... (Score:1)
Re:Couldn't the answer really be... (Score:3, Insightful)
This simply is not true. Apple is huge over in Japan, and their iPod has outsold anything and everything Sony has released, and countless other Japanese and other Asian based companies. The same can be said about a whole ton of other markets.
Japan doesn't have a problem with Microsoft being a western company, it's just that Microsoft just doesn't have the lineups that the Japanese market craves. Microsoft needs to simply invest huge amounts of cash into com
So? (Score:3, Interesting)
If MS can make a business out of making a western console for a western market, all the power to them. Maybe it's time to play hard-to-get and let the japanese pine for imports and translations of the western hits. Or not, doesn't really effect me any.
MS should concentrate on getting good games on the console for "any" territory, and stop worrying about the asian market. Blizzard seems to be doing well in China with almost no effort to adhere to some kind of asian sensibility, other than language translation. Good games are good games, regardless of territorial borders.
Re:So? (Score:2)
-Eric
Re:So? (Score:1)
Re:So? (Score:1)
Good western developers:
Bioware
Inifinity Ward
Bungie
Id
EA
Bethesda
Relic (although the outfit was terrible)
Monolith
Ubisoft
Rockstar
Obsidian
Valve
etc.
Gee, anyone else know any good NA developers?
Capcom and Team Ninja are already faithful MS console developers who make western friendly games. Square has already released a game for the 360. Who are all these killer developers you're waiting for?
No, I don't care about the Japanese market. Sorry, it doesn't effect me. The original
Re:So? (Score:1)
Interesting. Got some data and analysis to go along with that? Or maybe you're just going to hope nobody calls you on it. Oh wait, looks like somebody did.
Re:So? (Score:1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_in_video_gaming [wikipedia.org]
8 of the top 10 NA games in 2005 came from US developers, and were mostly sports games for NA leagues that I doubt would have much pull in Japan.
All 10 of the top NA computer games were NA.
Were you just hoping I wouldn't show up to defend myself?
Re:So? (Score:1)
Increasingly, the best-selling games in North America
Okay, so now you've linked to an article that summarizes one year in gaming. How exactly does this show a trend?
And on the subject of sports games, they are not a really good representation of this statistic. Their sales are artificially inflated by the nature of the genre. By this I mean game series that crank out a new title each year when all that's really been changed are the rosters.
Re:So? (Score:1)
Why do sports games not count? Maybe this is what North American's are buying, year after year, with only a roster change. Wouldn't all genre's love to have that kind of free ride.
I was more curious why people continue to question why Microsoft is not accepted in Japan, when it's a north american company making games for
Re:So? (Score:1)
You are the one who has no facts. You made a claim. I questioned your claim, and you still have not produced an argument nor any data that would validate it. If you make a claim, you must be prepared to explain how you reached it.
In addition, one does not need multiple sets of statistics to disagree on something. One
Re:So? (Score:1)
North Americans, for the most part, purchase games by North American developers, regardless of what console they own. That was my opinion, and I linked to data to back that up.
Now you want to agrue about how
Re:So? (Score:1)
Increasingly, the best-selling games in North America are made by North American developers.
You linked to data for one point in time. How does that show a trend? Here's a hint: it doesn't.
Re:So? (Score:2)
Arguably, all a console needs for credibility is satisfied customers and profitable sales.
However, this article is all about the Console Wars and the console makers who compete so fiercely, there's only room for a handful of winners. Japan is still, to a great extent, the cultural nexus of console gaming. Two of the big three console companies are Japanese (as well as some big historical ones), and many key game d
Re:So? (Score:1)
India may be the biggest market for motion pictures, but the market has recognized that the cultures are too different to create worldwide hits for all markets.
As gaming becomes more mainstream, the need for north american developers to produce relavent content for a north a
130k Xbox 360s In Japan (Score:2, Informative)
And with the abysmal and shrinking sales the 360 is doing each week it is unlikely the system will ever get through the remaining 360s gathering dust on Japanese store shelves right now.
One benefit of having the 360 failing so hard in Japan is it draws attention away from how hard the system is selling in the rest of the world. The latest confirmed by third party retail sa
Re:130k Xbox 360s In Japan (Score:4, Insightful)
130k in Japan, 1.6 million in the US, 700k in Europe
Hi,
What is your source on these numbers?
Re:130k Xbox 360s In Japan (Score:1, Interesting)
Even now the trade in value of a Xbox 360 is less than that of a Nintendo DS. Yes, and old portable that retails for $130 sells for more on the used market than a $500 next generation home console. If you want an Xbox 360 in Japan you already have far more than $100 off on the used market. Retailers don't even need to lock their display cases because they know tha nobody would steal and Xbox 360.
The problem is games. Microsoft fucked themselves just like they di
there's only one way the 360 can do better in JPN (Score:1)
Re:there's only one way the 360 can do better in J (Score:1)
Re:there's only one way the 360 can do better in J (Score:3, Informative)
From the article:
PlayStation 3 - 8726.9 cm^3
Xbox - 7727.4 cm^3
Xbox 360 - 6616.9 cm^3
PlayStation 2 - 4179.1 cm^3
Gamecube - 2656.5 cm^3
Mac mini - 1384.7 cm^3
PStwo - 978.9 cm^3
Wii - 955.5 cm^3
Re:there's only one way the 360 can do better in J (Score:1)
What the Japanese don't like is an American console.
Re:there's only one way the 360 can do better in J (Score:1)
the only way to increase sales in japan... (Score:2)
Re:the only way to increase sales in japan... (Score:1)
Maybe you should at least consider an alternative point of view:
http://www.4colorrebellion.com/archives/2006/01/0
Re:the only way to increase sales in japan... (Score:2)
Re:the only way to increase sales in japan... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:the only way to increase sales in japan... (Score:2)
Seriously, there are more amerigophiles in Japan than there are in the United States. They play baseball, fer cryin' out loud. It's not a matter of Microsoft not being a Japanese company, simply that Japan has different tastes in games than the US (they'll still consume American "culture" in mass quantities, just different parts that what is popular over here).
Microsoft has a reputation for putting forward FPS-heavy consol
Re:Ugh. Tim Rogers is wrong again, and still a pun (Score:2)
Read the rest of this comment...
Priceless.
Sink some money... (Score:1)
Ain't gonna happen! (Score:1)