will/is the 360 a success?

[Spectrumglr]

highwaystar101 said:
It would be a bigger success if it had japan

 

i think that we are overestimating the importance of the Japanese market..to me as far as western gamers and western deveoplers are concerned Japanese salese are pure statistics (written bold!): western gamers are usually more interested in western-made games (ok, there are exceptions but for the most part we can consider this as a rule), and western deveolopers are only interested in the size of the userbase in EU and US (western-made games usually don't sell at all in Japan).

In other terms If you are a western developer and you are to produce a FPS, a RTS, a westernstyle RPG, a sport game, a driving game (and it's not called GT BTW), a MMORPG or whatever you just look at the userbase in western countries...adding to the equation Japan sales it's no more than pure statistics: you know that you won't sell almost anything in Japan.

 

let's do some examples: you want Bioshock 2 on PS3? ok, it's basically 15M userbase vs 6.5M...you want Mass Effect 2 on PS3? again it's basically 15M vs 6.5M...and so on. On the other hand PS3 in Europe is not selling on the back of JRPG (that ironically happen to be available for the x360!) or japan-made games...it's selling on the back of Assassin Creed, COD4, Need for Speed, Fifa, PES and Uncharted: only one is an exclusive coming from japan so having a big userbase in Japan is not a great deal from the point of view of a western gamer that wants to see big games on his favourite system.

 

In conclusion: as long as the gap between X360 and PS3 in NA+EU will remain that big (and this gap is actually widening) then the x360 will remain the first choice for western developers....and western developers happen to be the ones that produce the games we (american and european) like the most.

From this point of view x360 is a success so far. Period. (Clear and simple...isn't it?).