they may be dwarfed by sony and nintendo but the original xbox only sold 450k lifetime sales.. 360 's base is 3 x that size so it's a success to microsoft anyway

We all make mistakes, im not above them.

Well, all right. But I think their best bet to gain marketshare in Japan is by building a first party.

There's no reason to complain then, unless you are being hypocritical by stating that you care about Capcom, which then again as you wrote are ok as long as they get microsofts money. This is good for the consumer, developer, and microsoft, Win-Win-Win situation. The only criticism that the game may draw is that it's a 2 year old pc game port, but then again you have Monster Hunter Tri coming to wii, why should you care again?

I would just say "screw japan" but MS thinks that if they keep pushing they will eventually break through.. Who knows. They have the cash, and they have business sense, maybe one day something will come out of it all.

Er, Cave, G.Rev, 5pb, Alchemist, Koei and others disagree.  360 basically inherited the STG/ADV okatku-core legacy in Japan.  Previous torchbearers include PC Engine, Saturn and Dreamcast... honestly, it probably has more JP only releases coming up than PS3.

I really like the new commercials especially the Monster Hunter one. Can't wait to see where the journey goes and what game universe they end up in.

Far from it, the 360 is getting a few SHMUPs and rarely some 5pb graphic novels. Theyve managed to attract that down to the fact the 360 is easy to develop for, but now with the sheer increase in the PS3s userbase, it might not mean much.

The PC-E, Saturn and even the Mega Drive had huge mid-tier support as well as big-budget exclusives that gave them a niche in the market. In fact the Saturn beat the N64 with more hardware sales despite Nintendo having the Pokemon craze as well as stronger software sales.

MS are doing okay hardware sales wise, if they stay at the current 5k trend, theyll end at a decent total userbase, but unfortunately, the attach rate has not kept up with the increased hardware sales. Worst of all, those 360 owners pretty much all have PS3s which means that 1.2 million 360s mean little for developers wanting to make a HD game. If that wasnt bad enough, even in previous years they benefitted from the holiday effect, but this year, it did little.

Just look at the massive disconnect between Pro Evo 10 sales on both systems even though MS helped market the game. One place where MS did do well on were Western games sales, but thats no longer the case, Gears of War 2 for example has sold less than the first game. Similarly, fighters that have been released, SCIV, SFIV and Tekken 6, have all sold roughly the same amount despite the increasing userbase.

MS need to get out a slim and very cheap system out soon, this could get a lot of handheld and Wii gamers to get the 360 as a poor-mans-PS3  as it does have most of the big HD games being released by the big publishers. MS should also make better use of Mistwalker, but it seems like theyve given up on the traditional approach and riding their luck on Natal.

All in all, MS have done well and its going to be a big factor in influencing the sales of their next system as after all, the 360 does have a quality line-up for Japanese gamers, but that success has been extinguished by the PS3s improving fortunes.

There's a lot of hate in this thread for MS and what happened in japan. For me, the truth is that they really tried, and it hasn't worked like they wanted simply because the japanese are inherently resistant to western consoles and games, and also haven't jumped like crazy at the HD bandwagon.

You can't tell the 360 doesn't have great games, it does, it works well, has the best online, and MS did try hard with japanese exclusives, even though the quality / quantity ratio isn't the best.

The japanese market is in a weird state these last few years, but ultimately, I think Xbox will never get traction there because it's an american console.

Make 3 new JRPG's, release them all worldwide, and I'm all for!