Reasonable said:
Not really at this point - MS deliberately held the slim launch to coincide with the MH release - and the spike is in line with other such titles on 360 without the slim so I see little evidence that the Slim sales were down to the Slim itself. My view - sorry to be negative - is that when a 900% boost that requires a new console, a major title launch and a price cut on your old model still leaves you third behind the other two consoles in a region the news isn't actually that good, really. This will almost certainly be a very short lived boost based on those numbers I believe. It's the US and UK (and to a lesser extend the rest of Europe) where MS will be looking for a real, consistent response to the Slim. Those are the regions MS needs to keep the momentum going (particularly the US) and build it's market position and sales. I'll be very surprised if the 360 is above 10K next week without a title launch to support it. If it does then MS might have won a bit of a reprive in Japan, but looking at the Slim on it's own it really doesn't offer anything the current model doesn't in lieu of Kinect launch so I really don't expect it to sell any better in Japan in a consistent manner at this point. |
While I understand your rationale, I'm not sure I agree with your analysis. Let me see if I can offer a counter view (let me say up front that I agree that the 900% boost will be short lived):
1) Assuming the numbers above are accurate, the 360S significantly outsold it's older (and now cheaper) bretheren: that would indicate that the release of the new title was not the primary factor (actually, I would say the release of the title confounds any specific analysis). Specifically, if the Japanese public ONLY wanted a 360 to play MH, there were much cheaper alternatives then the "S" sku. So the increased sales of the 360S would suggest that this sku is somewhat resonating with the japanese market.
2) Japan is bsically a lost region to Microsoft; the fact that they CAN invigorate sales to this level in a market that has, for the most part, ignored their offerings IS something to take notice of. I agree that still being third in the region is not the best outcome, but being third by a couple thousand rather than 15-16K is a step forward. EVEN if the long term affect is only a baseline of say 4K a week, vs 1500 a week, that IS improvement.
I am not claiming that the "S" is the second coming of Christ, or anything like that, I understand that initial demand will diminish to more reasonable levels in ALL markets. But I don't think Microsoft is too down on the performance they achieved this week in Japan either.
