| Lord N said: For starters, they could have looked at how other non-Japanese companies have managed to break into the Japanese market. Apple and the Ipod would have been a good place to begin. They should have tried to implement something new that Sony and Nintendo didn't have. Then again, that's actually above MS because they aren't a very innovative company to begin with. They're used to being able to throw money around and get what they want, but now that MS's only real weapon has proven to be nigh useless, they really don't know what to do with themselves, because for the money they've spent, the most they can hope for is to end up a distant, unprofitable second and just a few million units ahead of the PS3 at best. All that their money has really bought them is a few new IP's, and some of them have been unmitigated failures as far as sales and notoriety are concerned. Nintendo's first-party wipes the floor with anything MS could ever buy, and the proven third-party IP's that do well in Japan such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Metal Gear Solid, Kingdom Hearts, Monster Hunter, etc, have remained on other platforms. Certainly someone at MS could have devised a better strategy than burning hundreds of millions of dollars to reach meaningless sales marks. It reminds me of a military commander who starts a battle in which 100,00 of his troops die just to gain a few square miles of useless territory. |
So what is your actual idea in this post, again? All I see is Microsoft bashing, and very little of what I actually asked. If you were head of Microsoft Japan, what would you do? You offer no solutions, just complaints lodged at Microsoft. Give some actual examples of what Microsoft would/should/could do in Japan to boost sales.
My point was/is, that if you can't answer that, then your really not entitled to bash them if you couldn't come up with a much better idea. 3rd party IP buying isn't the greatest solution, and I agree. Personally, they need to work far more with Mistwalker and build them up to rival SE, since at least Sakaguchi has lots of credibility, and Blue Dragon is a well-known good IP in Japan for the X360. However, you have to credit the success that Microsoft has had in the past 3 months due to 2 new 3rd party games. They took a very dismal showing in 2008, and made it jump past Microsoft's best performance rather quickly.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
