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."

Comments

Um

[M.C. Hampster]

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?

Re:Still bad design.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the main design flaw in the Xbox 360 is the games. They aren't designed for Japanese gamers, and Japanese gamers already have a seemingly better console to look forward to, which will have better games for japanese gamers.

Heck, Sony's been setting up features that may or may not be great for gaming, but who cares when they have so many extra features to throw against the hype of the xbox.

Face it, the thing thats going to sell Xbox is either the loyalty gained by people impressed with the first one, or people being be fed up with Sony.

The difference this generation

[a no n y man 123]

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.

Re:Kill my karma

[damiangerous]

Wavebirds lack the vibration feature. Normally I would say "feature", as it isn't usually that useful, but there are some Gamecube games where I wouldn't want to play without it (Mario Party, for example).

Dog Fight Baaaby!

[blueZhift]

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.

Re:Good list

[shawb]

I think it's funny that Microsoft is pushing to be the first to market with the next-gen system. For most generations, the first to market ends up being forgotten completely (for more information see Wikipedia:

The first of the current generation of video game systems was the Dreamcast.

The first of the generation before that (64 bit) was the Jaguar.

The first 8 bit system? Colecovision, which had the distinction of doing pretty good for an extremely short period of time untill the NES was released.

Actually, it looks to be almost a fluke that the Genesis did fairly well, considering that it was the first major player in the 32 bit market. And the Atari 2600 is probably too old to really compare, as the market has shifted vastly since then. So MS naysayers should be happy that MS is pushing for such an early release.

Why the Japanese hate US games.

[Neo-Rio-101]

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.

Re:Why the Japanese hate US games.

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you've worked in a Japanese company for a considerable amount of time,"

American branch of a Japanese multi-nat (pretty good American presence) with many on-site Japanese-born executive and support staff, seasonals, and visitors, yeah, four years.

"having to speak Japanese"

It's still a struggle due to severe apathy on my part, but sure.

"and having to deal with customers/superiors in business situations as I have,"

Perhaps not as you have, but yes, with the additional relationships of having Japanese subordinates and equals in staff, with far less direct contact with customers if you're even going to mention them.

"then I think I stand to learn considerably."

Unquestionably and regardless of any of the above qualifications, from my point of view, if indeed you weren't joking.

The head-facing-forward way to look at what you've dismissed as childish is that you're expected not to be an asshole when others make mistakes, and the same courtesy will be extended to you when YOU make a mistake. This is hardly a childish attitude, as it requires consideration and moderation of your own emotions in deference to those of others. It also expects that the wrongful person has the wherewithal to understand his responsibilities to right his own wrongs, which has typically been the case with the Japanese I've worked with. This consideration is considered respectful going both ways. Everybody saves face.

For example, no Japanese that I know will tell you that you're being a penis-brain for being as dense to this concept as you've shown. But I will, because I am an American, and you are a penis-brain for the aforementioned reason. See? Now you're on the defensive, putting you in a position where a response from you is now warranted (you now have to regain face, because I didn't let you save it, and I've also lost face, also because I wasn't respectful enough to you to let you save face), and the outcome would just be continued negative reactions from both parties. In contrast, the expected response from a Japanese person as I'd see it would have left you to feel bad on your own terms, not requesting or demanding any kind of response from you other than for you to realize that you should get your shit together on your own. That person would not have lost face, and everything ends there.

I'll give examples from personal experience. Last month I fucked up slightly at work thanks to not following through on some double-checking (simple due diligence shit), and it led to a slight delay on a pretty unimportant (ultimately) project. The whole time, my Japanese subordinate kept chugging away on what I told him to do, but afterwards I found out that he was clear on a concept that my superior had asked of me all along. My American staff members did the same, but their only understanding of the project was what came from me. My director's response was that other teams would have to pick up the slack due to the setback, but he didn't say anything negative about my own work to me in private or in front of my staff. I felt like crap, and I redoubled our work on the project, almost pulling all-nighters a couple times. My director hadn't come off like an ass in my eyes, just disappointed, and it pushed us. Later the same week, my team was in gear and bringing other teams up to date on how we'd fixed things ourselves. Our director hadn't even asked them to take over any slack, he expected that we'd do it ourselves. I asked my Japanese staff why he didn't tell me that what we were doing was a little different from what our director wanted, and he apologized. That's it. I realized that he had just passed the buck to me, but he just didn't say it. After all, I'm his immediate boss. We saved face.

Going back way farther to find an example of me being the guy to let someone else save face, same scenario. One of my Japanese co-workers/friends (same managerial position) once caused my team to have to redo all of his team's work on one project for the past two