Lace 360 controllers with some highly addictive skin absorbable drug, and hold a bunch of "test out a 360" events all over Japan. After a week or two, they'll come back needing their fix.

Outside of that, I don't know. Give them away for free?

I think they're going to have to go big or go home. If they want to be successful in Japan they have to be prepared to lose a lot more money to do it. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 million.

The games they're paying for now are having an impact but there simply aren't enough of them. Whenever they release a big game it does increase sales but then there's nothing to help carry the momentum for weeks afterwards. If I were them I'd pay out about $375 million to have 20 games made with average to smaller budgets ($15-$20 million which includes advertising), and on top of that have another $125-$150 million spent on 4-5 bigger games ($25-30 million). The sheer number of games would grab the attention of Japanese gamers, especially if at least one or two of the bigger ones were from Square.

They would have to do all that plus sell the 360 at cost in order to have an impact (in my opinion).

More exclusive and multi-plat games on the X360.

It's not about price anymore, it's not so much preception, as it is games. I wouldn't want a X360, nor would anybody, if it lacked games I wanted to play.

We've seen time and time again, when a halfway decent IP, new or old, launches on the X360, hardware moves.

Consider the games:

IdolM@ster
DOA4
Enchanted Arms
Trusty Bell
Blue Dragon
Lost Planet
Nintey Nine Nights
Ridge Racer 6
Ace Combat 6

Versus

Gears of War
Oblivion
Perfect Dark Zero
Halo 3
________

Which group moved more hardware? Gears, Oblivion and Halo 3 are all well above 60k each. Despite that, however, a comparible Japanese game can move 2 or 3x the hardware in Japan.

Like someone else said earlier, if the X360 can keep snagging big exclusives (like AC6), or eventually make Final Fantasy main series games go multi-plat, or pay $100m and buy one off, it'd do very well in Japan.

1. More japanese oriented and experimental games.
2. Make a slim lownoice version. (Xbox 360 Lite)
3. Better commercials, better branding.
4. Cut the prize a bit.
5. Make some cute colored versions, pink etc. or with manga drawings..
6. Change the name, or only use 360 in branding..

Seriously though, selling under a different name and distancing the console from microsoft would probably help. The same way Nissan use to sell under Datsun in the USA to distance itself from WWII. Which actually worked really well.

1. Microsoft buys Square Enix
2. Even then the Japanese sabotage the XBox360
3. Microsoft quits Japan (rightfully)

Bomb Sony and Nintendo's production facilities.

It's funny when everyone loves to post quick, trollish comments rather than any sort of insightful, valid points of discussion.

Well even if MS gets FFXlll it will come out after the PS3 version and I doubt the japanese will wait to get it.

They should buy the rights to Pokemon!!!