xbox dead in japan? yes or no? reasoning plz

[mrstickball]

jhlennon1 said:

mrstickball said:
So in my opinion, it's certainly alive. It's the "master of it's own destiny". If MS keeps pumping out day-and-date multiplatform titles, sprinked with a few Japanese-made exclusives here and there, and the yearly Mistwaker title, Microsoft can and will carve out a niche fanbase of 1.5-2.5m users. That's a very impressive number for a system that opened up with a paltry 40,000 systems sold first week.

The problem is that unless the 3rd party games are timed exclusive they don't sell on the 360. If the game is available on the PS3 then the 360 version gets ignored, just look at Musou 5 and PES08 they boosted PS3 sales while the 360 got totally ignored in both hardware and software increases. Unless Microsoft can change that they have major issues. After Lost Odyssey, they have nothing exclusive that appeals to Japan for quite some time.

We have no idea when Infinite Undiscovery and Cry On are due and other then that, 360 doesn't have anything that the PS3 dosen't have.

For the most part, I agree that multi-platform games that aren't timed exclusive have little effect on hardware the week-of for the X360. However, I am optimistic that the further the war goes, the more consumers will start picking the Xbox 360 over the PS3 due to library, even in Japan. We're seeing a very similar thing in Europe - sales for multi-plat games are starting to do stronger and stronger for the PS3, and are having a bigger and bigger effect.

However, there are tons of various multi-plat games for the X360 in the coming months that are much, much stronger than last year - a day-and date Armored Core vs. time delayed, Devil May Cry 4, Last Remnant, Resident Evil 5, ect.

However, I wonder what exclusives Microsoft has for Japan next year - Ninja Gaiden 2 will be big, as NG1 was pretty big there, despite the abysmal timing of it (2004, when the Xbox sold litterally nothing in Japan, it wound up doing 66k that year. NG2 could hit 150k if done right, or more). Then you have Cry-On, Infinite Undiscovery. After that, it's a big question mark on what's going to be there.