WW - 21st August Up!

[Reasonable]

Mr Puggsly said:

Reasonable said:

I don't think it's the titles so much as the brand perception and genre association.  MS invested, particularly early on, in both true exclusives such as Blue Dragon as well as purchasing or otherwise negotiating timed exclusives that were specific for Japan, but I just felt they never overcame the brand/genre perception of being FPS/Western titles orientated and that they tried to use too western a style of marketing early on.

When the timed exclusives came to and end and the titles then hit PS3 with more content I think that hurt the 360 a lot in Japan, too.  In hindsight I think the timed exclusives approach was a mistake for MS, they should have either made sure they were true exclusives or only invested in real exclusives vs anything timed.

On paper the 360 has more than enough content to sell in the region I'd say - so I guess I disagree it doesn't - but it doesn't have the right perception in the market and MS don't seem able to attain it.  Now, it's irrelivent I think.  The boosts that saw the 360 easily beat the Xbox total seem over now, even the slight spike from the clearance sale and new model seems to be slipping away and never took the 360 near the Wii and PS3 in the region.

Unless Kinect suddenly becomes huge in Japan, then I think the 360 has achieved what it can there and will only see very small average weekly sales around the 3 to 5 k mark.

Not really much to argue with. Brand perception plays a roll. But I mostly blame software for poor sales. I mean if the 360 had major exclusives like the PS3 often gets in Japan. We could naturally assume the 360 would be in bigger demand there.

Oh I do agree with that.  I'd note the 360 got good spikes when it received decent jRPGs as exclusives.  The issue was, in my view, that too many turned out to be timed, and once the market realised that the game was up and the 360 lost those spikes.

TBH MS I think MS would need to put in a effort so costly to get anywhere in Japan, at least for the foreseeable future, that I can't see them bothering.  I believe MS would need to both invest heavily in expensive 'denial of service' tactics (which I don't actually approve of but recognise are used in the market) to keep as many games off Sony/Nintendo consoels as possible - essentially they'd need to buy out the titles as exclusives by paying the developer enough to cover expected sales on other consoles (thinking paying SE to make a FF game 360 exclusive and paying them to cover the likely lost 4M sales on PS3), as well as investing heavily in a lot of new IP and exclusives like Blue Dragon.

Even then, they'd be forcing the market to their console, which would only work short term.  Nobody likes being forced to buy something because they have no choice if they want certain games - which is why the market didn't take to the timed exclusive approach IMHO - and likely MS would lose the market again when Sony and Nintendo released their own titles and IP through their own, much stronger development capability than MS.

TBH, when I think about MS in Japan, whichever way I think about it, I can only see them coming in last place.  It can be a horrible last place like the Xbox, or an okayish last place like the 360, but I think it's always going to be last.  Given the sales outside Japan I expect MS to aim for decent 360 level sales in the region but focus their efforts (and money) more on US and the rest of the world and see if success there can stimulate more interest in Japan than trying to win locally on their own merits.