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Has The Xbox Failed In Japan?
Thanks to GameSpy for its article interviewing Microsoft executives about the Xbox's popularity in Japan. According to the article, 400,000 is the 'magic number': "...the number of Xbox consoles Microsoft has sold in Japan since launching the system in February, 2002. It is roughly the number of copies of Grand Theft Auto that Capcom has sold into the Japanese market. And, historically speaking, it is the approximate number of 3DO consoles in Japan as well." Apparently, "'That is the yogei-acceptable number in Japan'. [The term "yogei" refers to foreign or Western.]" However, Mike Fischer of Microsoft suggests that "game developers are tired of Sony's dominance in the market, and that that more Japanese-appropriate hardware will lead to better sales in Japan which will lead support from companies like Square/Enix which will then lead even greater acceptance in Japan."
Does anyone else find it ironic that Microsoft is basing the acceptance of the Xbox on the possibility that developers are tired of Sony's dominance?
Hello? Anyone home? Ever wonder why you're having trouble breaking into new markets? Or maintaining existing ones? If recent trends are any indication, there's one company whose dominance developers are getting tired of and it's Microsoft.
Let's hope that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space 'Cause there's bugger-all down here on Earth.
I predict that American electronics will never penetrate Asian markets until it's vastly superior and blows everything else out of the water
Since when does superior hardware specs have anything to do with winning a hardware war?
My guess is the problem isn't as much a problem with Xbox hardware specs as much as two things.
The first is quite frankly a cultural rejection of a product made in the USA which is admittedly similar in nature to the kinds of autos the US would have a problem selling in Japan and which sort of defines us to them: big, bulky, and power-consuming. This is of course in sharp contrast to the culture and of course their subsequent designs for the Gamecube and PS2, which both have fairly eloquent designs.
If anyone would understand the other reason their product doesn't sell so well, it'd be Microsoft. Software. The hardware is fairly good, but their most popular-selling titles are Western titles like Halo, KOTOR and Morrowind. While RPGs are very popular in Japan, Morrowind and KOTOR definently don't fit their archetype.
I just don't think Microsoft is going anywhere in that market, because I don't think their market is nearly as open as a US market.
Wow. What a bunch of crap.
Have you ever visited Japan? You know who the two biggest commercial draws in Japan were in 2002? Bob Sapp (a washed-up NFL player, turned K-1 "fighter".) and David Beckham.
Japanese markets eat stuff that's huge in the States and Europe up BIG TIME.
The XBox is failing on many reasons. It's HUGE, the average Japanese house has very small living room space, and it's common space. It's also commonly used for sleeping. Kind of hard to do that with a huge-ass console plus controllers there.
Second, the XBox commercials SUCK. The XBox Live commercials in Japan were easily the worst video game commercials. One had this scantily cald woman, who looked like she was on drugs, creeping along a wall that's littered with pie remnants. She slinks up to one of them, and tastes the pie. That's it.
In version 2, a man is in an elevator. A demon pops out from the ceiling. Man's elevator falls through the floor. This makes me interested in a system's online capabilities, how?
What are the biggest console game sellers in Japan the last 3-5 years? RPGs. By far. Pokemon, FF, Dragon Quest. If you ain't selling them, you ain't selling consoles.
What does the XBox not have? An RPG.
Why is the average Japanese RPG fan going to buy and XBox and Live when a PS2 and FFXI is going to take up all his time?
Figure out the answer to that question, and then go apply for a high paying job at Microsoft. Until then, the system fails not out of jingoism, it fails because of Microsoft's failure.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
The XBox failed because it came late in the game. Don’t blame it on the Japanese. Sony had the Playstation 2 and tons of games on the market when the XBox was getting out of the game. When almost every Japanese household has a Playstation 2 console what do they need XBox for? The XBox didn’t offer anything of value to me and I imagine a lot of Japanese people felt the same. The choice between and XBox and a Playstation 2 in Japan is a no brainer. You take which ever console has the most games and a lot of your friends have so you can share game libraries.
Don’t blame the Japanese, blame Microsoft’s incompetence.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
game developers are tired of Sony's dominance in the market
I didn't know that developers would get tired of developing games on the most ubiquitous home videogame system. It's usually the best way to make a profit.
Because if they get tired of Sony's dominance, clearly they have no one else to turn to besides Micorosoft, right?
If they want someone other than Sony but who has more "Japanese-appropriate hardware," there are good odds that they'll flock back to Nintendo long before they consider you.
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I know it's not a lot, but at least this kind of humility is a start. While there is still arrogance throughout that interview, I think Microsoft is finally getting the picture that you have to earn respect in Japan before anything else, and the same blitzkrieg marketting tactics don't work their like they do here.
Jingoism aside, the XBOX is a very American-centric system. It's big, bad, and proud of it, pretty much why everyone hates all things American at the moment. It's hard to buy loyalism this way.
As a counter example, I present Apple. Apple takes up a significant computer market share in Japan, despite being an American company. The Japanese love Apple products because they're simple and elegantly designed. As a corollary, this is also why they like laptops.
All things aside, the XBOX is a great console. From a developer side, it's a godsend. It unfortunately has the problem of being a Microsoft product being marketted by idiots. It is also so American it might as well bleed red white and blue.
If MS would just drop the arrogance and American pride for some humility, as well as hire a competent marketing team with global marketing experience, and finally hire some hardware designers with some modicum of zen aesthetic design, Microsoft would be a force to be reckoned with.
--jedi\/\/.
basically, what MS is hoping for is that Japanese developers will say to themselves "Hey, we're tired of making a profit by selling games for Sony's playstation, let's go make games for the incredibly small XBox market!"?
Good luck with that one, guys.
Out of all those rpg's listed maybe 2 or 3 will be of interest to the Japanese consumer. Have you ever seen what comes out over there across the pacific?
Datings sims, Horse racing sims, and a bunch of other quirky genre games are huge over there. There is a huge difference between the American gamer and the Japanese gamer.
It is very hard to penetrate the japanese market and M$ should have done the research to get the games that appeal to the Japanese gamer and get those games released over there. Releasing the majority of the US line-up over in Japan isn't going to cut it.
The truth is, the X-Box failed in Japan because of Microsoft's failure to sufficiently respect the Japanese market, not because of some supposed contempt for all things American on Japan's part.
A Japanese Ambassador spoke at my university in my freshman year. The X-Box specifically didn't come up, but this same sort of thing was discussed for a while.
One particular professor (who's about as ethnically open minded as a Grand Inquisitor) asked why Japanese consumers so widely reject US products, while Japanese products (from cars to video games to anime) sell well in the US.
The ambassador's reply was that Japanese consumers were, by and large, very open to new things, wherever they came from. American entertainment particularly is as popular in Japan as Japanese entertainment is in the US.
However, he said there's also a greater sense of "consumer sensibility" in Japan, particularly with large purchases.
A DVD, CD, or video game from the US doesn't typically cost much more than a comparable Japanese item, so they sell comparably well.
However, American and European cars don't sell well because they take more gas and cost more (they cost more here, and when you add shipping costs to the US cars and subtract them from the Japanese cars, the difference only gets bigger), so it often doesn't make sense to buy them.
I think the same sort of thing can be applied to the X-Box. It costs more than the PS2, it doesn't have as many games available, particularly in the most popular genres in Japan, like RPGs, and many of those games that it does have are also available on other platforms, like the PS2, PC, or Game Cube, that people probably already have. In that sense, it just doesn't make sense to spend money on an X-Box.
The Xbox did not fail because it was American. It failed because it has no games that appeal to anyone outside of the US.
To all of the clueless idiots talking about 'pride': this is a system that only sold in any numbers near release, to Tecmo completists who wanted to play DOA3. The Xbox no longer registers as a going concern in Japan (or most other Asian markets). It's not just 'underperforming', it's dead. And yet MS still try to put a brave face on it. Just as they do with the (moderately successful among US teenagers, utterly rejected by gamers and developers worldwide) Xbox Live system.
MS have subscribed to the belief that hardware brute force, suffocating software conservatism, spiralling production costs and infintely deep pockets can overcome the need for support and cooperation from the rest of the industry. Obviously, they think, the consumer is expected to buy what they are told is cool. This is why they have failed to make much of a dent in Sony's dominance of the sector (the sole objective of the Xbox's existence in the first place). And they still can't figure out why.
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