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360 To Be Relaunched In Japan
GamesIndustry.biz reports that Microsoft is planning to relaunch their next-gen console in Japan ... now that there are some games to offer players. The event is scheduled to happen in June, to coincide with that country's launch of Ghost Recon, among other titles. From the article: "It's not yet clear what form the relaunch might take - whether it will see the console's pricing or bundles being changed, or if it will simply be a new marketing campaign focused on the locally relevant software available for the system. Japan was the only territory where the Xbox 360 did not sell out at launch, despite having a smaller allocation than any other market, and in fact the launch underperformed by comparison with the launch of the original Xbox - itself hardly a stellar success story in the region."
Why fail something once, when you can fail it twice at twice the cost?
I encrypt all my files with Double XOR Encryption!
I guess this is what mean when they call Microsoft a 500lb gorilla bullying their way into whatever market they feel like dominating? I don't know any company that has deep enough pockets to go through this much effort to gain foothold in a particular region. (Albeit, a very important region). I would really like to know how much money they've spent in the Japanese marketon marketing and development. I heard they really beefed it up for the original 360 launch because of the dismal failure the original xbox was in Japan. Only to see it fail even worse. Hmm .. maybe you can't just through money at 'culture' and expect to win them over after all?
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"Never time to do it right. Always time to do it twice." Saw this a lot as a consultant. Never rings truer!
Didn't Nokia try that with the N-Gage?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Does that mean it will be recrashing, too?
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
maybe you can't just through money at 'culture' and expect to win them over after all
Unless you got a Great Artist to culture bomb a city.
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Japan doesn't need or want a FPS game like Ghost Recon. What they want is Brain Training and Nintendogs. They want Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. They want Zelda and Mario.
If the second launch doesn't include any new genres, then I expect it to succeed as much as the first one. That is to say, not at all.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
You're right. Instead of the enemy being Mexican, they should have set it in China.
Or Korea.
That would have been much better localization.
No reason to lie.
Final Fantasy XI is slated to be released next month on the Xbox 360 along with the release of the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion. I've heard rumors that MS plans to ship 360s in Japan with FFXI already installed on the hard drives to boost sales. PS2 and PC users (I use the PC version) will need to get the expansion while the 360 version will already include it.
FFXI on the 360 looks just like FFXI on a high-end PC with high-res textures and bumpmapping. The overall artwork won't look that different than the PS2 version but it will not be quite as fuzzy and will look better. Its expected that there will a PS3 version since its inconceivable that SquareEnix would abandon their VAST army of current PS2 users.
FFXI: Treasures of Aht Urhgan for the PC and PS2 is coming out April 30th similtaneously in Japan and the US.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
What is this "relaunch"? A console can only launch once.
Are they going to bundle a game with it? Nintendo's done that with the Gamecube like 4 times and they weren't called "relaunches". Are they going to ship more consoles? No... that's not neccessary. Are they going to market it agressively? That's still not a "relaunch", that's a "marketing campaign".
Maybe it's just a different interpretation of the word "launch". To me it means "the first time you sell your product to the public". Maybe to them the meaning is "the first time the public buys your product".
Sure, I'm looking too much into this, but a term like "re-launch" peeves me. It's like how the little things got to the Seinfeld gang.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
It's not about the number of games, and it's not even so much about the quality - it's what those games are. Microsoft completely failed to grab the Japanese audience with the original XBox and they swore up and down that they learned from their mistakes and wouldn't repeat them with the 360 in Japan. Lo and behold, they did repeat them.
From our perspective, the Japanese play some weird-ass games like Shogi, Go, Horse Race Gambling, Mahjongg, and somtimes weird combinations of the 4. Microsoft doesn't seem to get this. The Japanese are fully aware that they don't get this and they find it offensive that this upstart American company expects them to buy a product that they clearly didn't bother to research enough to cater to them.