Darth Tigris said:
A repost of mine from here: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=3602905
To be honest, its not fair to call the Japanese xenophobic as they have supported and still support many products made outside of their borders (as you mentioned about Windows). But . . . when it comes to gaming, they ARE xenophobic. Why is that? As has been mentioned by them and others before, it likely has to do with how western game design lagged so far behind the Japanese in quality throughout the late 80's and 90's. There are still generational gamers that are locked into that mindset, and maybe it extends beyond them into a cultural belief. I'd imagine that a similar belief is the case with American made cars, even though they have gotten much better (heck, with my personal experiences with my Honda, I don't know if I could ever break free). So in some ways, the criticism is fair when it comes to Xbox sales in Japan. What I think is more telling, though, is how good it has done despite doing so bad in Japan and how much trouble the PS3 would be if not for them. Japan remains an enigma this gen . . . |
That's exactly right. When it comes to gaming the Japanese are like Apple fans looking down at PC when they are a tiny percent of the industry yet claim supremacy. How is it that the whole world loves Halo and COD and Mass Effect, but not Japan? The whole world agrees that Xbox 360 has great games, but not Japan. Japan is the only region that continues to snub Xbox 360 no matter how many blockbust games get thrown at them. It can't be a matter of taste becuase Japanese games are very popular in the west. If western gamers enjoy Japanese games then it could be said thaqt western gamers share tastes with the Japanese. But the Japanese don't share tastes with western gamers? How is that possible? Fun is fun and good games and good. Halo, Call of Duty, etc should be universaly enjoyable, but for some reason the Japanese won't even pick up the controller if it's attached to a western machine. I call shinannigans.
