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Was Blue Dragon What X360 Needed In Japan?
simoniker writes "Have major RPG Blue Dragon and other Microsoft efforts paved the way for Japanese Xbox 360 success? 8-4 Ltd's John Ricciardi and Kotaku's Japanese correspondent Brian Ashcraft have been talking about the issue, with Ricciardi commenting on Gears Of War's recent appearance in the Japanese Top 10 game chart, with 33,000 units sold in one week: 'I mean, granted, everything is relative — so yes, in a market where the average 360 game sells around 5,000 copies, 30,000 or so may seem like a big deal, but at the end of the day, their userbase is not expanding. The week Gears came out they only sold a little over 7,000 pieces of hardware. It's not enough.'"
"One game is never going to turn a console from an abject failure into a success all by itself."
Halo. It saved the original X-Box from failure in the US.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
You mean like Mistwalker?
No, what Microsoft needs is for companies like Konami and Square to say something like this: "Yes, we are going to put [Metal Gear Solid 4|Final Fantasy XIII] on the Xbox 360 because so many people [outside Japan] own that console." There have already been indications from both those companies of interest in the 360 (and both companies already have titles available for the console), but if they made a real commitment to developing their top titles for the 360, then both other developers and the Japanese gamers would follow.
I'll have to mostly agree with you. When Halo and its sequel are the top two selling games on the console, it's hard to argue that they were central to the success. But: look a bit further. The rest of the Top 20 Xbox Games list shares a lot of entries with the Top 20 PS2 Games list: a racing game, Madden, some EA games, Tony Hawk, etc.
And here's where the differences appear. There's a lot more overlap in software in the US and Europe. Don't have a PS2? Don't worry, the Xbox has some stuff that might be as good or slightly worse/better. This is true again this generation with the PS3. The most overlap between consoles is between the PS3 and the 360. Here, in the US.
In Japan? Not as much. Their equivalents of the GTA series, Madden and the like are not out on both consoles.
So that has something to do with it. The Xbox had more equivalents (or like substitutions) for the North American and European markets.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Someone answer me, I'm not trolling here I want some sort of answer that makes sense to me... Why the fuck AREN'T these companies doing that?!? The Playstation 3 has been selling abysmally in the States and from the sound of other articles, not so well in Japan either. The 360 has positioned itself as a huge demographic outside Japan, and any company looking to make serious money on a product is going to have to release software for this platform. We know that Square has a raging hard on for the most sophisticated and gaudy visuals possible, and only the 360 and PS3 can offer that capability this generation. Is Square intentionally trying to sell very few games outside of Japan? What possible reasoning could the company have for being so foolish as to pass on releasing their product for the 360? Same goes for Metal Gear Solid 4... but that's more likely since, I believe, in the past all the MGS games came out for the XBOX... just later (I could be mistaken).
These supposed 'Upgrades' are laregly fanboy dreams. There is no *need* for HDMI -- at all, ever, period.
The Component video the 360 uses is quite capable of full 1080p @60 Hz. The Optical out can handle the 5.1 surround the 360 cranks out.
There simply is no reason that HDMI is a 'must-have'; those who believe otherwise have been drinking too much of Sony's HD kool-aid. Adding HDMI will add absolutely nothing to the consumer experience, but will add quite a bit to the cost of the unit.
The 120 GB drive is, quite frankly, overkill. Some fanboy must've decided that twice what Sony is offering is worth bragging rights. If you want more space, get another drive. You can swap drives in a few seconds flat -- try that with a PS3. Moreover, I've got some-odd 20 games, played all of 'em. I've downloaded movies from Xbox live, as well as demos. I've only used about 70% of the current drive -- and most of that is the movie rental I downloaded and haven't watched. Drive space is a non-issue with the 360, as you can replace the hard drive almost as easily as swapping a memory unit.
Last, HD-DVD. I never watched DVD's on my original Xbox. I never knew anybody who watched them on a Playstation. It's not because they weren't capable players: It's that stand-alone DVD players were already plentiful and cheap.
The HD DVD drive is probably the most successful add-on drive on any console. I bought one, and I can't complain abot it. The HD DVD drive lets Xbox owners get a high definition player at a modest price.
But with the cost of stand-alone HD DVD players dropping rapidly (Down to about $300 now, IIRC), the real advantage of having HD DVD on the 360 just isn't going to be there for much longer. You're never going to see games that use the HD DVD disc-- it would be suicide, as you'd piss off legions of customers who don't have an HD DVD drive. There's also the false belief that you can actually play games from the HD DVD Drive-- the truth is, when you put a game into the HD DVD drive, the result is exactly the same as if you put the game in a standalone DVD player (try it sometime).
In every one of these three cases, you're adding a substantial amount of cost that does nothing to benefit the customer; HDMI is marketing puffery, with no real benefit to consumers (unless, that is, you see DRM as a good thing). More hard disc space would be useless to most users (I didn't even get *close* to filling my original Xbox's drive, and the 360 isn't faring much worse). HD DVD players are dropping in price rapidly enough that six months from now, it will be cheaper to just get a standalone HD DVD player. Forcing an HD DVD drive on the consumer will drive up the cost of the 360, and make it less able to compete with the PS3 and Wii. History tells us that people don't use game consoles to play movies; and adding a substantial amount to the price for a feature that few will really use is insane. Like I said earlier -- a very small fraction of console owners used their Xbox or PS2 to play DVD's; there's no reason to expect some magical change this time around.
Stop buying into the Playstation marketing madness; Sony threw Blu-ray into the PS3 to try to tilt the 'format war' in its favor, and it added a couple hundred bucks to the console's price. The PS3 needs more hard disk space, as the games install substantial amounts of code to the hard drive-- something the 360 doesn't to. They made design decisions that are a gamble, and may well backfire on Sony quite thoroughly. Where there's opprotunity, there's also risk.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.