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Top-Selling Japanese Games In 2003 Reveal Trends
Thanks to The Magic Box for their chart showing the top-selling videogames in Japan during 2003. Square Enix's Final Fantasy X-2 for PS2 tops the chart, selling a little less than 2 million copies, despite Japanese consumer discontent with the title, and Nintendo's Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire for GBA places second, with almost 1.5 million copies sold in 2003, and nearly 5 million in total. A surprise hit in third place is the PlayStation 2 action title Dynasty Warriors 4 from Koei, and further down the chart, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for GameCube can only manage a disappointing 26th place, with 310,000 copies sold, and an Xbox title of any kind is, sadly, nowhere to be seen in the Top 30.
Because it's a top 30 list, and GTA hasn't sold enough copies to make it into the top 30. It would have to have sold more than 265,083 copies to beat Kirby's Air Raid and make it into the top 30.
My apologies... instead, I should have said that "while I lived in Japan for 2 and a half years, every driving range I ever went to, day or night was completely full, and every golf course I ever inquired about had a waiting list of several months at least", thereby making me believe that "there are a good many citizens of Japan who enjoy the game of golf" and perhaps "they play video-game golf in order to get at least some sort of golf-experience that they otherwise could not afford the time or money to have".
And while I know that RPG games sell VERY well in Japan, I do not believe that everyone there wishes to go out with a sword on the street, slaying first rats and small animals and then moving on to larger things, ever-searching for that eventual girl to rescue.
not every simple mis-speaking/mis-typing is racist, and I hate it when it is viewed as such.
For someone with a sig line of "I hate liberals, if you are a liberal do not reply" your PC flag flies very quickly, it seems
--Less Thinkin', More Drinkin'...
I think it is easy to bash Microsoft over this but really, what American electronics companies sell well in Japan? It's not just the XBox that doesn't sell well there. What about American made cars? Do you think they sell well in Japan?
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
They got another Dragon Quest (Warrior) Monsters Game? Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart for the GBA was 7th place. Does anybody know if that's just another name for one we have over here or an entirely different game? I've actually never played one, but I've recently become enamored with the Dragon Warrior series, having played the rereleass of 2 and 3 on the GBC, and DW7 on Playstation.
At any rate, it's a little OT, but, do any other single-player RPG fans out there besides me find the Dragon Warrior games to be a whole lot more satisfying than the Final Fantasy series? Sure, the graphics on DW7 are pretty subpar for the Playstation, but the games seem to be a whole lot more challenging, with less cheesy diolouge, cooler spells and attacks, dungeons with more than one direction to go in, and things like that.
They get plenty of respect in Japan, as Dragon Quest 7 was the greatest selling playstation game ever over there, or something like that. But they really don't get props over in the States. Nobody payed much attention to the GBC rereleases of of Dragon Warrior 1, 2, and 3, even though they were marvelous remakes, and it's been near impossible to find DW7 in a store for a long time now. [sigh]
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I'm not sure why this described as sad - I would characterize it as entirely predictable. We have all read about the many struggles that Microsoft has had in gaining acceptance in the Japanese market. Despite its best efforts, Microsoft's console has remained in last place, embarrassingly outsold even by the rebranded original PlayStation, the PSOne.
Part of the problem is the physically large design of the Xbox hardware itself, in a country where space in the typical home is at a premium and a small PS2 or GameCube is far preferable to the bulky Xbox.
Part of the problem is undoubtedly related to an allegiance to the domestic console manufacturers - Sony and Nintendo - over the foreign Microsoft.
But the biggest problem may be a cultural one. If the Xbox provided titles that appeal to the Japanese market, the Xbox would have better sales and better game sales. But it doesn't. Without the titles to back up the platform, there isn't - and the shouldn't be - any expectation of strong sales.
Splashy marketing and hype only buy you the attention of Japanese gamers (or any gamers for that matter). The question is: Can the Xbox deliver on the content?
So far - in Japan - the answer to that question is a resounding NO.
Nope, GTA is sold as Grand Theft Auto here in Japan. I suspect that it was just a few copies short of the top 30 (maybe #32 or 33?). GTA is distributed by Capcom. I don't think the list contains only games made by Japanese companies (game magazines don't tend to do that), but few if any non-Japanese made games sell very well here.
Biohazard was sold as Resident Evil abroad because of (I believe) issues with the band Biohazard.
Different reasons, though. American cars don't sell well here because they (historically) are huge, have bad mileage, and break down a lot. I don't know if things have changed, but it's less the "foreignness" of the product than the "low quality".
XBox, on the other hand, is a pretty high quality product (I own one and am very happy with it). The problem is that they have NO decent games on it in Japan! It's incredible! Pick your favorite 10 XBox games. 9 of them have probably not been released here. The only game that looks like it would truly snag a few Japanese gamers is Tekki (uh, "Steel Batallion", I think?), which even then only appeals to otaku. I had to resort to buying an American XBox and getting games shipped from overseas because the dearth of interesting games to play.
Uhm, Crystal Chronicles came out in August in Japan, so considering how popular Final Fantasy is over there, I think that's definitely a little disappointing, although understandable considering the smaller install-base of the GameCube compared to PS2.
:)
How did you think FF:CC sold 300,000 or more without having come out, anyhow?
This is actually a really tough call. There is definite correlation, but there may or may not be causation. That is, I suspect that Japanese buy Japanese products not so much because they are Japanese, but because they are better. I can't really think of many non-Japanese consumer device companies who produce to Japanese standards. I would say the XBox, but the giant CD-scratching fiasco on launch pretty much knocked that out. Motorola stopped making phones in Japan for a long time due to low sales, but the low sales were due to incredibly crummy phone specs (black and white when TFT screens were standard). I can't hink of any big non-Japanese manufacturers right off the top of my head, so please help me out.
The one obvious exception I can think of is Apple. People here are all over iPods, and I never hear the country of origin discussed.
And when it comes to computer parts, Taiwan is king of course.
I suspect the simple answer is just that consumer electronics from other countries almost always have a higher than normal number of defects/bugs (and horrible instruction manuals (hehehe)), which shys consumers away more than the intrinsic non-Japaneseness of the product.
How Sony manages to keep selling Vaios well, despite their reputation for breakage, is beyond me though...