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."
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