Western Xbox Titles To Flood Japan?

Thanks to GamePro for posting an article discussing the fact that Microsoft may try to keep the Xbox alive in Japan by flooding the market in less territory-suitable, but already in-development Western titles such as Conker, Voodoo Vince, and Counter-Strike. According to the article, a Japanese retail chain "..claims that Microsoft is planning to release overseas titles in Japan without bothering to localize them for the local market - in other words, they'll release the original English version with a Japanese manual attached." The article suggests this is a sign that Microsoft may forget about the mass-market in Japan, and will be "..dropping its large-scale strategy [until Xbox 2], and concentrating on the 400,000 or so hardcore fans it's managed to scrape together over the past 16 months."

Comments

Re:U.S. is Microsoft country?

[johndoejersey]

in the uk gamecube and x box are considerably lagging behind the ps2. Gamecube seems to have caught something of a second wind since many retailers cut 1/3 off the price of a the console. xbox - IMO seems to be a poor 3rd place.

Re:Japanese Market

[Kamel Jockey]

If the language barrier interfere's with that, why are they bothering to even release it?

Going back to my example with Chrysler, Lee Iacocca said that there was no economic incentive to localize their products to Japan because they weren't selling enough vehicles, even though the reason they weren't selling enough vehicles was because they were not localized. Essentially, it looks as if Microsoft is "selling more of the wrong thing" (Iacocca's words) before they have an incentive "to start selling the right thing."

But then again, do a lot of Japanese people understand English? My guess once again is that they don't, and as a result they won't care for games that are English-only just as most Americans wouldn't buy Japanese products that weren't localized for this country. Japanese industries (cars being the most obvious example) swept the markets here because they sold the customers what they wanted. They knew they weren't going to make it in the USA if they did otherwise. I don't understand why Microsoft is taking the opposite approach in Japan and expecting it to work. Maybe they just are not used to playing in a competitive market.