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Blue Dragon Pushing 360 Bundles in Japan
1up is reporting that Blue Dragon 360 bundle pre-orders are selling fast in Japan. Maybe, finally, Microsoft has a product that will get the Japanese market on its side. From the article: "According to one retailer, Microsoft is planning to produce 100,000 of the Blue Dragon hardware bundles, and 10% of these will be the limited set with all the cool Blue Dragon merchandise we mentioned. With all the Toriyama fans in Japan, it might not be surprising to hear that these 10,000 limited sets are being snapped up pretty quickly, but hey, we're talking about the Xbox 360 in Japan -- the machine has been struggling to sell more than a thousand units each week recently. At the end of the first day of pre-orders, most retailers are now sold out of the limited set."
It's Limited, that means there's going to be increased demand for it even if people aren't really that interested in playing it. It also means that it won't mean much for the 360 in Japan, because it won't increase the number of people in Japan with a 360 by a large amount. Because it's limited.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It's always interesting to see how different the gaming habits are in different countries/cultures.
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Could this actualy let MS compeate with Sony in Japan?
I can't wait to see the actual sales numbers sometime next year for the next gen systems, things should be rather interesting then. (My vote is already cast on Wii, and will probably stay that way, however I still am interested)
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
Here's hoping MS pulls this one off. As much as I dislike MS, at least they're grounded in reality unlike Sony these days. Maybe some (hopefully) good competition from MS might make Sony reconsider their attitude for a while. I'll always be a Nintendo fan at heart, but I'm also realistic. As sucessful as the Wii might be, I'll still want a 360 or PS3 to games that just aren't geared for that system.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Promising news for MS, and nobody has anything witty to say? Color me disappointed.
Let me start by saying I don't like Microsoft, I HATE windows and IE7 is gay.
But! xbox is the most complete gaming platform ever created (in my humble opinion) and the xbox 360 kicks that up another notch (Those anticipating the wii, I expect it'll rock too). If Microsoft has ever produced a really good product, it would be the xbox line. I hope this pays off because I want xbox to persist for several platform generations to come.
One day the toilets of the world will rise up... And I'm going to nuke them.
...not because the 360 has changed, but that reality has set in that PS3 will have fewer features for a higher price.
That sucks. Where the @%^# is my $250 US Blue Dragon bundle?
Gaming for over 25 years
Actually, I as a 360 owner, I'd have to say there there's one important area in which the X-Box beats the 360 hands down. Specifically, the X-Box was pretty damn bug free. Why? Because Microsoft had specifically stated that Live could not be used for updates. I never had a single X-Box game crash on me. 360 games, on the other hand. Ppfft. While I wouldn't give up Dead Rising, Just Cause or any other of my 360 games up, there have been several problems. Ignoring the red lights issue, several games such as 'call of duty' were released with significant bugs that needed to be fixed. Same for Dead or Alive. Both had to be patched over X-Box Live. And the 'disc read' errors are definitely not overheating related. They're down to cache problems on the hard disk. How do I know this? Because I got a reproducable error in Dead Rising, and it didn't go away till I formatted the HD and transferred my save back off a memory card. I still think my 360's a great console, but I wanted buggy games, I'd use a PC. As for this being the game that brings the 360 success in Japan? Er, no. I'm expecting a complete rerun of the X-Box 1 situation. The only thing that really made headway with the original X-Box was cutting the price. And even that didn't have a prolonged impact.
So far this YEAR the X-Box 360 has been selling worse than the Gamecube in Japan. In calander 06 they sold about 75,000 units in that territory, and Gamecube sold around 76,000 - 78,000 (in Japan, in 2006). With only 100,000 PS3`s on launch day (for Japan), and low manufacturing yields, the DAY the Wii comes out in Japan, it will outsell either of them, likely both.
I'm going to wait and pick up the Platinum Dragon Bundle Edition. You know, the one that comes with extra scenes, two pewter figures and Greedo shooting first.
From what I can figure out, Sony is still selling nearly 840,000 a month in Japan (judging from the last 3 months of data here:http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdatap s2_e.html) So selling out most of 10,000 units is really success only relative to the disaster sales have been so far. The headline seems to make this more of a success story than seems justified.
From what I can tell, the next generation as a whole is taking off slowly; even in the US.
Just walk around any game store in Japan, in Akihabara in my case, and you will isles of every games system....but then you will find a couple 360, and if you are lucky XBox games. Same thing goes for XBox games. I personally think they are waiting for the other two systems to release before making a buying decision.