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?

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.