Slashdot Mirror
JP 360 Stock Moves Slowly
Omkar writes "According to Kotaku, the Xbox 360's price has been cut to a mere $150 by several Japanese retailers. Apparently they can't send unsold inventory back to Microsoft, so they're desperate to free up space." Indeed, Next Generation reports that something like 60% of all Japanese stock goes unsold. However, 1up has found that the price cuts aren't the whole story. The price cuts aren't because of consumer interest, but a result of specially priced bundles. From that article: "... this is simple another example of Japan's hardware bundling practices. So, although the 360 isn't selling as quickly as it did in North America (about 28% of the units shipped have been sold so far, according to a Bloomberg report), the photo doesn't indicate that prices were slashed after launch day as some sort of desperate measure - it means that Japan has bundled offers that are just as annoying as the ones we have in North America."
Since I the Japanese don't want them, I'd be happy to pick up a couple for $150. There's a lot of morons here in the States that will still pay $700-900 for a 360.
So, it turns out that the systems haven't been "cut to a mere $150" but instead are being advertised at that price for a promotional bundle with Internet service. Given that you have a link with the correct story, what is the point of including the nonsensical one?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The problem with Japanese sales is the lack of a great blockbuster. There has only been 6 titles released for them: Perfect Dark Zero, Ridge Racer 6, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Every Party, FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup and Tetris: The Grandmaster Ace.
It's a shame that Microsoft is waiting until the release of PS3 before releasing Halo3. If they had released H3 with the 360 they might have done better in Japan, but hey who is really broken up about it?
Peter Corcoran
You failed it.
So 360's are sold bundled in Japan. Fair enough. Are PS2's sold bundled in Japan? If they are, how much slower are 360 bundles being sold than PS2 bundles? Don't give me "percentage unsold" — that's horrendously misleading.
And all that still doesn't answer the question of why prices were cut to ~$150 anyway. Does MS want to make their retailers bleed with them?
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Even though it's shown that they didn't really drop the price that low (at least, without any strings attached), they still had a bit of a discount at the very start. Wasn't it closer to $330 USD at launch? I believe another article (don't remember where) recently said that that's comparable to the PS2's launch price. I guess 40,000 yen is seen as some sort of magical barrier for what people are willing to buy. Same as I won't buy a Coke/Pepsi for $1.25 :)
It's not the bundles that are the problem. They just aren't including the right things respective to the native audience.
Throw in a couple pairs of used schoolgirl panties and some tentacle mangas and you'll have a hit.
At current supply levels it will be a while before you can just go to a western shop and pickup a 360.
That I think is very telling that right now the 360 is not a hot item in japan.
Of course there is one tiny little difference. It is the holiday season in the west, the time to give expensive gifts to your loved ones or even your kids.
Do the japanese have a similar season or have they adopted christmas for that purpose?
I find MS comments that hopefully DOA4 will cause sales to pickup funny. If you cannot shift a mere 150.000 consoles in japan on launch you have lost that market. Maybe the japanese are just upset at being last this time. Usually it is the EU that has to wait.
Anyway who cares. Instead of constantly chasing a market you cannot win focus on the US and EU market. Better OWN those markets totally instead of wasting resources on a half-assed conquest of japan. It is the smallest of the 3 markets.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I guess the Japanese are smarter when it comes to gaming.
Buying a system on release is practically useless beyond the "hey, guess what I have!" factor: hardly any games, high prices, and first-generation bugs/issues.
Even if you really want an Xbox360, there's no reason not to wait. The games that are actually worth playing won't be out for a while yet, and the release catalogue is laughable. Having the system early only gets you some negative cashflow.
Now, don't think I'm some Nintendo fanboy or Microsoft detractor. There's no reason to buy ANY system on launch unless it has a decent game catalogue.
IMHO, the people spending thousands on Xboxe360s on Ebay are fools. Maybe if Halo were already released...
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
What's a "JP 360 Stock", and why is it news that it "moves slowly"?
Good god, just follow your own link to see an ISP is offering it at a reduced price. Please don't copy and past stories from Kotaku or Joystiq, they are bad enough.
For a moment I read that as "Jurrasic Park 360 stock moves slowly". Holy shit, Spielberg and Chrichton can really crank them out, eh?
Maybe they should replace the '6' with a 'D', it might sell more units.
This might be the first console to be beaten at launch by something two generations behind.
Of course they don't like it - it's big, fat, white and noisy, just like most Americans.
Hey, at least it doesn't run Windows.
Nah, the Dreamcast is only 1 generation behind. The DC is the same generation as the PS2 and Gamecube. It's actually a lot better than the PS2 in a lot of ways...the PS2 has a stronger CPU, but the Dreamcast can out-texture the PS2 easily. Most Dreamcast games look better than most PS2 games. Though if you really want to get technical, the GC and Xbox are a generational leap over the PS2 and DC. The PS2 and DC only had rendering accelerators, while the GC and Xbox have full GPU's (hardware T&L acceleration). The PS2's video chipset really amounts to a really fast Voodoo1, the feature set is about the same. It can't even do multitexturing, which is something that was introduced with the Voodoo2...it has to depend on the CPU to do all the work. The Dreamcast was a very good system for its time, and sadly it was under-appreciated, but the problems were as much Sega's bad business decisions as they were hype for the PS2 killing the system.
...according to the articles, in the first 2 days. IANARetailer, but isn't that a pretty good showing for any product?
Regardless of what the Japanese get up to over Christmas and the New Year, the start of December sees most people getting a winter bonus, with the average this year being somewhere around 850,000 yen, or around US$7,000, so it makes sense to try to get the XBox out at the start of December.
HAHAHA! Great morning pick me up.