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Louie on 18 August 2007
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RolStoppable said:
BrainBoxLtd said:
johnlucas said:

Is the 360 REALLY selling this badly in Germany. God!

It's been out over there since Dec. 2, 2005 for God's sake!

Almost 2 years and Wii beats 'em in 9 months!

Microsoft has some work to do over in the European region that's for SURE. Maybe they take those blue screen Windows crashes more seriously than we thought, huh? Elephant memory I guess.

John Lucas


It is no surprise ot me that the 360 bombs in Germany. Most of it's most popular games are rated M, and Germany have the harshest rules for software content. Gears of War went through about 8 re-edits for the German Version, and all were turned down in the rating process, so it never released over there, and that's the best selling game.


That shouldn't be a real problem. German gamers are used to censored versions and pretty well know how to get a version from Austria or Switzerland which also contains german screentext and/or voice acting.

As for GoW: The game didn't pass at the USK (equivalent of the american ESRB) and therefore wasn't officially released in Germany (just like the first God of War, although one year later Sony gave it another try and the USK gave it an 18+ rating and the game was finally officially released in Germany, uncensored). Gamers imported Gears of War nonetheless to play it. The game was still popular enough in Germany, it even made it on the index of the BPjM.

The real problems for Microsoft in Germany are:

  1. Big PC nation. People don't buy a console to play the same games they can get on the PC, especially FPS which are inferior on a console due to dual-stick-controls anyway.
  2. Germans don't spend much money on consoles. The 360 premium is already available for €300 at major retailers, including two games. Apparently that doesn't help much.
  3. Germans buy consoles mostly for casual games, even more so than other countries. Games like Singstar, Buzz and Eyetoy plus a price tag of €200/150 really sold the PS2 there (the PS2 started of very slow due it's initial price of roughly €450). Wii Sports is doing the job for the Wii, even at €250, the DS is easily outselling the PSP.
  4. Brand name. Sony was the dominating name the past two generations, Nintendo is still well recognised as family friendly (GC outsold Xbox in Germany).
EDIT: I spent way too much time on this post, everything I said, has been said in the mean time.

Read this post and you get everything Ben and I said before in a much more complex form. It explains the situation in an excellent way.

Great Post, Rolstoppable!