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20 Reasons Why The 360 Might Fail in Japan
1up.com has an interesting look at the forces ranged against Microsoft in Japan, as the 360 poises for a major push in foreign markets. From the article: "There are enough reasons (we have ten) to believe things will be different next round, and Xbox 360 will eat away at PlayStation's dominance in Japan. Yet there are those who still believe Japan will never embrace a non-Japanese game console (and we've got ten reasons why these arm-chair analysts are correct.) Warm up your typing fingers as we give you ten reasons why Xbox 360 could kick ass in Japan, and ten reasons why it could bomba bomba in Kutaragi's backyard."
Wireless controllers suck. Why are they going to be mandatory on the new consoles? I look forward to interference and loads of batteries. Fuck!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Unless it actually has boobs, this isn't going to help. In the Japanese market, the main design flaw of the Xbox was its sheer size. It wasn't a masculine/feminine problem. Personally, I think it's still too big but being able to stand vertically helps.
Come on editors, let's get on the ball.
The article has 20 reasons why the Xbox might Fail in Japan or not. There are 10 reasons why it might succeed and 10 reasons why it might fail.
Can someone fix the headline?
Forget the whales - save the babies.
10 Reasons Why the 360 Might Fail in Japan
10 Reasons Why the 360 Might Succeed in Japan
that bashing the XBox 360 is the Slashdot meme du jour, but the article actually consists of 10 reasons why it might fail, and 10 reasons why it might succeed.
How do I know this? Did I read the article? Bah! It's in the damn summary:
Warm up your typing fingers as we give you ten reasons why Xbox 360 could kick ass in Japan, and ten reasons why it could bomba bomba in Kutaragi's backyard
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
I don't want to sound bad, but does it matter if XBox 360 doesn't succeed in Japan? Isn't it okay to do well in certain markets, and not do well in others? Some Mozilla fans are just fine with a 5% marketshare. There are plenty of other examples of foreign companies trying to sell to the Japan market, and failing. Isn't this okay, isn't it something everyone can accept?
It called the Xbox 360, but there is NOTHING round about it!
Many people believe one of the reasons the first Xbox failed in Japan is its relatively large size. If you've ever been to Japan, you know how little space there is. In this round, however, the Xbox 360 is actually slightly smaller than the PS3 model that Sony has shown. So it will be interesting to see what difference, if any, this makes.
The Xbox 360 is going to launch with about as many "Japanese" games as the original Xbox did.
5 959
While Microsoft has signed on several big name developers to do games, none will have games ready for launch. By the time these titles do come out Sony will have the PS3 and it will be too late for Xbox 360. Also, only a couple Japanese titles really draw a lot of mainstream attention in Japan. The others are somewhat niche. Remember Jet Set Radio? Dead or Alive 3? Yeah, they really helped the xbox out.
http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=1
Choices, choices...
Actually I'm suprised, a great list of 20 things about the XBOX 360 that needs to be considered. I personally considered getting a XBox 360 but for the legacy Xbox games formost.
The biggest hurdle is Xbox 360 is American. Japan isn't fooled by a "we are coming out first". It might be good for a little time but Xbox and Gamecube both came out at the same time.
PS2 was going to be the clear cut winner when the PS2 was announced as it had the gamers and games lined up. Final Fantasy started the attention but GTA and Xenosaga and such nailed it into the ground.
The Xbox 360 has a few games that are similar to great PS2 games, and it can beat it, but we'll talk about N3 now, but what will DW6 bring out? I'm sure a more coherent and polished games then N3? Why because they have learned that from the past, DW2 was hardly a block buster right out of the gate.
Xbox 360 likely will pass the tests and get a decent following and Nintendo has a lot riding on Reveloution but Sony is not becoming laxed liked Nintendo was in the late 90s and it'll be impossible to beat them, I'll be suprised if Sony drop below 50 percent of the market. We'll see more when we get closer to PS3, but anyone considering buying a XBox 360 should consider this. It's VERY likely we'll see a price drop when the PS3 comes out as a quick "win" and that'll be the smartest move if PS3 comes at 400+
So hold off for now and wait til a little more is revealed if you want to back a winner.
Its American. Duh.
Given the choice between guilt-tripping about feeding the American Mega-Corp monster your heard-earned yen, and providing needed greenbacks to your local silicon-pimp zaibatsu, the average Japanese will, simply, buy Japanese.
See, hegemony works two ways: for you, and against you. And until Microsoft do something about their utterly cheesy PR (yes folks, its true, people do actually see through the hype after the 3rd or 5th reboot..), and their general association as an utterly untrustorthy, bastard, bitch-slappin' Yankee company, the Japanese will always choose local over import. Simple. Sweet. To the point.
Under-estimate nationalism, in others and yourself, at your own peril...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
A nice little read. But this just tells us what we already knew, it's gonna be a do fight baaaaaaabyyyyy! And that can only means good things for gamers. Even the Dreamcast had some nice games in its ultimately losing effort. So I think we're gonna see some really interesting stuff coming out of Japan on Xbox 360. Some have said here and elsewhere that the Japanese will never embrace a foreign console, but I don't think it's that simple. The impression I have is that the Japanese like new things that are cool whether they come from Japan or not. That's why Nintendo and Sony, for example, would even bother with so many variations on their consoles (special editions, etc.) that come out in Japan but generally do not make it to the U.S.. And that's why there are a million and one cell phone models in Japan, and so on. In Japan, companies have to keep things fresh and new to stay in the game. If the Xbox 360 can deliver fresh, new Japanese games that people will want to play, then they have a shot. They may not take down Sony and Nintendo, but a really strong showing would be as good as a win in the land of the rising Sun.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
While Microsoft is touting Xbox 360 as the most powerful next-gen hardware, most believe the PlayStation will outperform it in terms of graphics prowess. This could mean trouble for Microsoft as Japanese Xbox developers had one thing they all loved about the first Xbox: it was the most powerful machine on the market. That advantage may vanish next round.
Why does this matter? The PS2 was the most successful console of the latest generation, even though it had the worst graphics (not counting the Dreamcast, of course). If you compare the graphics of Gamecube and Xbox games to PS2 games, the PS2 loses 90% of the time.
I don't think that the difference between the graphics of the next generation consoles will matter much, in the end.
American games feel like they were designed by marketers, not artists, because they are.
It does say they have "all" Japanese publishers on board this time...Maybe it'll be different then, I hope so.
PLEASE NOTE: The preceding was a generalization, there are some good american games. But clearly not enough that appealed to the Japanese market, or me.
--Proud Dreamcast owner, still has some of the best games ever.
Wavebird lasts at least 10x that.
But then they replaced them with these wireless ones, which are obviously inferior.
Even if the size was the problem, it would be a purely aesthetic thing, not that it actually won't fit. If you can fit a TV, you can fit an Xbox, end of story. Do you have some stereotyped image of Japanese people squeezed into closets that are big enough for them and their PS2, but small enough that the extra cubic foot of an xbox would cause them to suffocate?
Please, some common sense. Few games, bad games, nationalism, everyone owning PS2s... these reasons at least border on reality.
And also, illiterate.
They started off with a controller very similar to the controller S.
Most Japanese I speak with have told me the number one reason they won't buy American.
The games are too unforgiving.
What they mean to say is that they are generally "unfair". Most FPSs fall under this category. Let's say that the typical Japanese player is playing an FPS and suddenly a sniper from out of nowhere on the opposite team gets a head shot on him. What does the Japanese person do? He switches the game off.
He doesn't get frustrated. He doesn't whine about how unfair it is and start namecalling over chat. He doesn't get angry and try harder. He just says "this is too hard, and unfair, therefore this isn't fun" and switches off.
Japanese want to play games that are (a) fair and (b) fun. They do not derive sick pleasure from being killed from out of nowhere with no chance to respond in a logically thought out way.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
The Xbox 360 still has minimal support from Japanese developers. Of the titles that have been announced, you can guarantee that anything worth playing will be ported to the PS3.
All of this talk about 'nationalism' and 'aesthetics' is dodging the issue. Endless Tom Clancy and Madden crap doesn't appeal to the majority of US gamers (just the same ~2m or so male teenagers), let alone those in Europe or Japan.
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I won't contest what you've said about games made in the USA, because at least a _some_ of them do fit that bill. (But then again, not all.)
But you've also got to realize that the game-producing world doesn't consist only of USA and Japan. Ever heard for example of Bioware? You know, of KOTOR and Jade Empire fame? They're Canadian actually. Lionhead Studios, makers of Fable? They're in the UK. Etc.
So the XBox has plenty of games which aren't made in the USA. (And the PC even more of them.)
The USA actually produces relatively few games. It's not just that the EU produces more games than the USA. The UK alone makes more games and sells more copies than the USA.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I nominate the title image from this article as the successor to the Slashdot Borg Gates icon. :)
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Crap. I goofed up my stats, turns out the number I posted for the Japanese sales was actually for software sales ONLY in 2003. A little further research gave me not only the correct number for 2003, but I also found data for 2004. The following are my corrections for 2003, plus the same data for 2004:
USA in 2003:
Population....................291 million people
Percentage playing games......50%
Hardware and software sales...$10 billion
Japan in 2003:
Population....................128 million people
Percentage playing games......37%
Hardware and software sales...$10.37 billion
USA in 2004:
Population....................293 million people
Percentage playing games......50%
Hardware and software sales...$9.9 billion
Japan in 2004:
Population....................128 million people
Percentage playing games......32%
Hardware and software sales...$8.22 billion
The results:
In 2003, Japanese gamers spent $219 each video games (wow!), while Amercan gamers spent just $68.70. In 2004, Japanese gamers cut their spending to $200.70, while their American counterparts dropped to $67.60.
So even with the huge drop of revenue in 2004, Japanese gamers still outspent Americans by roughly three to one. Microsoft would be foolish to ignore those numbers.
BTW, I should point out that the source for the Japanese sales figures, CESA, blames the majority of the drop in 2004 on console price cuts and Sony's PS2 shortage that year. (Software sales in 2004 had actually increased 9% over 2003.)
Must... think up... something... clever!