Japan Up - 10th July 2010

[Reasonable]

lurkerwithnosoul said:

ninty3ds said:

kowenicki said:

Reasonable said:

Looks like the 360 boost was down to MH after all and not the slim, as sales are rapidly dropping back to where they were.

PS3 and Wii so close now most weeks, I wonder if Sony are tempted to try and drop the price just a bit and see if that could pull in a bit more demand?

If 360 stays in that range or below with the 360s model then I'm doubting Kinect will make much difference in Japan either.

All the action for the HD consoles is going to be in US and Others now it looks like.

why would they do that? they are almost matching and demand is already there?  

they dont care about being slightly above the wii or slightly below it.

they care about revenue and profits.

...and the 360 is a pointless discussion topic for Japan.  I jave a 360S now, a fine machine - looks good, is compact and solid.. if that doesnt garner interest there nothing will. they are clearly not interested for whatever reason. Their loss. 

If even Kowenicki says 360 is dead in Japan, I guess it's really really dead now.

Now, everybody except diehard MS fanboys could already see it was dead 2 years ago, but better late than never I guess.

Still, I love the damage control part ("Their loss", "whatever reason").

Maybe they just prefer reliable consoles and they're now afraid of buying a faulty product (MS bad reputation).

Maybe they just don't like shooters.

Maybe they think there aren't enough good games that they can't already play on their PS3 or on their PC.

After all, the only major recent half exclusive is Mass Effect 2, and you can play it on PC, same thing for Fable 3, or Gears... It hardly competes with the numerous great PS3 exclusives.

Who knows...

 

 

I don't want to make you think i'm trying to 'damage control' the situation, but you totally missed the point of market appeal in Japan. Go figure out why by seeing the big cataloge of japanese exclusive games that Xbox 360 have over there.

 

And even though, Xbox still drop like a rock in week charts after a big boost. I'm just curious to see what Microsoft will do about this situation. Overmarkting the Kinect in Japan? Snatching one Dragon Quest or a new Final Fantasy to Xbox (:P)? Or pay for another new RPG (that would do it only for a week though)?

I think MS did everything it could in Japan to be honest.  It put money behind titles for the region, secured timed exclusives (not a practise I actually like, whoever does it, but nonetheless it put titles on the machine) and invested a great deal in marketing.

The bottom line is the console is simply not desired in the region despite this.  Maybe it's just a general perception, maybe the RROD episode really hurt the console in the region like no other, maybe they prefer consoles associated with popular titles, maybe they see 360 as having too many online FPS...I don't know.

But as Kow says the facts are obvious - the 360 is effectively out of the race in Japan.  On past evidence any money expended gets maybe one to two weeks of fairly minor boost.  It's not worth it anymore I'd say.

Roughly half the 360s in the world have been sold in US.  That's the core market, then UK, then Europe.  And that's where I expect to see MS focus going forward.  They'll keep a toe in Japan, but really it's not worth much more investment now I'd say - for example trying to get DQ (which I doubt MS could anyway) or paying for other exclusives.

Kow - I know Sony is focused on profits, but depending upon the price elasticity of PS3 (and of course a bunch of other factors) if the data showed that only a small drop would push demand over the Wii all the time I'd be tempted to do it.