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The State of Gaming in Japan
dean73 writes to mention an article at the SeekJapan site entitled The State of Gaming in Japan. The article runs down the seventh round of the console war from the Japanese perspective. IE: The one where Microsoft is probably going to lose. From the article: "The Xbox 360 comes to us now with a reduced price, a screwed-up slogan ('do! Game, do! Choice, do! Xbox 360') and a slew of games targeted at the Japanese audience. The trump card is Hironobu Sakaguchi: the Final Fantasy creator's studio, Mistwalker, is due to deliver the first of two Xbox-only RPGs, Blue Dragon, on December 7th. Given that the Xbox has until now lacked any decent Japanese-style RPG (the cocaine of the J-geek world), this might prove just the ticket, and Microsoft is predicting a big hit."
There is no X in the Japanese language. Therefore the Japanese will continue to view the Xbox as a myth.
...is that the Japanese version of Engrish?
I wonder if the Japanese laugh at it and will use it as an inside joke like "all your base are belong to us"? Of course, perhaps they're more cultured and civilized than us.
but I'd have thought the Japanese situation was fairly obvious: The Wii will sell well with its 'novelty' controller and family friendly games; The Ps3 will 'sell out' at launch and will move as fast as they can be produced/fast as people can afford them, and Microsoft will come trailing last selling just enough they can say its a 'success'.
No, I think someone just watched Perfect Hair Forever, and decided to lift Action Hot Dog's lines. Presumably the next ad will feature an old man asking his schoolgirl age companion to bend over and turn on his 360.
As for the commercials I have yet to see at least one.
I do hope their Japanese TV commercials do not end up like this.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
It's "Do! Do! Do!", a theme written by they boy band (Tokio) they got to front for them.
But yeah, the 360 is doomed in Japan. Sure MS was touting the Blue Dragon 360 package sellout, but they only made a thousand of them.
Last week they sold 22,380 PS2's in Japan to Xbox 360s 1,287. (source)
So while selling an extra thousand 360s is impressive for Microsoft, it's garbage for the market. Hell, most weeks there are more GBA new releases than Xbox in Japan.
A huge number of Japanese people speak decent English, why don't they ever write articles like this. I'd like to see more cultural analysis and an honest opinion of what the various players actually mean to the audience over there.
Seriously, why doesn't anyone go to Akihabara and interview some Otaku? They're not hard to find, and can be easily bribed with Final Fantasy figurines.
No one games anymore in Japan except otaku. The cool kids have all moved on to goofing around with camera phones. Nintendo has only stayed ahead of the game with the DS fad, which looks to be novelty-factor driven and probably won't have legs. Most market analysts predict the market is going to shrink.
Wow, talk about obvious. Throughout this past generation, most weeks there have been more GBA releases in the United States than any of the three home consoles. The GBA has been monstrously popular all over the world and developers can make GBA games for virtually nothing compared to the cost of developing for home consoles (and, the [low] quality of GBA games, on average, tends to reflect this). It's looking more and more likely that this pattern is moving over to the DS and will continue throughout the 360/PS3/Wii generation.
The weirdest quote from the article...
"If [Steve] Jobs adds an Apple logo to the PS3, I think users will say it can be sold at $2,000. However it's not possible for the PlayStation brand. That is the difference in the computer world between the PlayStation brand and the Apple brand."
Ken Kutaragi, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO & President
For the whole history of gaming, the innovation has come out of Japan, so that market is used to the sort of innovation you see now in the Wii. The US market is more one of sequels and clones, so it's natural that US based consoles will not sell well in Japan.
Japan has been the world center of gaming for as long as there has been a gaming industry. The 360 is not going to change that.
Actually, it makes sense that the numbers are so low. If I were in Japan, it'd be stupid to buy a console now, since I know in a month, there's going to be a nice bundle offered for the system. Wait until mid-December, and we'll see how the sales go.
I'm certainly not saying that the 360 is suddenly going to hit it big in Japan by any means. It's very close to "doomed" status. If sales continue to be poor post-Blue Dragon, then that'll be the final nail in the coffin. But if there's a decent size uptick in sales (especially considering that PS3 launch numbers have been reduced in Japan), then that's a sign of some life. I'm confident, though, that the top selling systems in Japan will be the Wii, the DS, and then the PS2, perhaps in that order. (The PS3 will have one huge week, then be gone, until the supply problems are smoothed out)
-- jchenx
According to Joystiq your number is off by a factor of ten. The 10,000 limited editions were apparently all preordered very quickly, too. And that's just preorders for the limited edition bundle. I think it's going to do better than you're making out. Nowhere near enough to crack the Japanese market, but they probably don't need to - the US and European markets are bigger, and if they can maintain a large hold on those markets, then having a smaller presence in Japan won't really hurt them that much.
You're right, I couldn't find my source so I was going from memory.
That will boost the Xbox numbers here by a lot, certainly there hasn't been anything like a Must Have Game for the 360 in Japan in the year since it launched. But if the only games they keep releasing here are translations of American sports and shooters, well, they're screwed, because those games just don't sell in Japan. Get some RPGs, fighting games, something based on a good anime franchise, a trading card game, or a port of a game-center game and they might have a chance.
But look at the top 50 games in Japan this week. Not a single xBox game on the list. The console has been out a year...
The problem with the 360 launch is that it takes time to develop a decent RPG for a system, so that's why launch titles rarely (never?) have any decent RPGs, unless they happen to be ports. The Final Fantasy games always debuted at least a year after the console launched, if that gives you any indication. Unfortunately, MS needed that kind of support sooner, which just wasn't possible. We'll see in a few months if it really is too late for the console, or if it's in fact too early too early to tell.
-- jchenx