Worldwide up!

[Reasonable]

daroamer said:

Reasonable said:

Darth Tigris said:

Seece said:

Woo Kinect In Japan, now outselling GT5! Rose week over week for 4th straight week.

Hopefully it can establish a good base out there.

WW, Kinect nearly at 1 mill this week alone, wow!

Yeah, I noticed that too.  Almost 3 times the sales of the console.  Wonder if the word of mouth in Japan is coming alive now too.  On that other thread I chose 250k lifetime sales of it, but let a Monster Hunter game debut or someone like Kojima release an exclusive game for it and you can pretty much blow that all up.

Doesn't look like the software is doing much over there, though.  Some games either must not be released or aren't tracked.

The fact it's selling way above the console itself shows its currently selling mainly to the existing 360 base.  The slow rise indicates not bad word of mouth but unless it translates to actual console sales growth it's only selling to the converted, which is good for MS in terms of solidifying it's niche foothold in Japan, but doesn't really help much with overall penetration - i.e. preaching to the converted is good for keeping them converted but doesn't bring in new fans.

As with the 360 HW sales worldwide the number (for Kinect) is so small relative to the other markets it's only really a curiosity.

A game such as something by Kojima might well change things - and in fact I figure MS best chance of seeing what I would personally consider real success with Kinect in Japan would be to fund some centric, high profile titles.  I doubt you'll see MH though, the big question there is where it goes with PSP2 and 3DS.

But Kojima has shown some interest in Kinect so you never know on that front.

I get the feeling though, particularly once MS really pick their way through the December sales, that their focus for Kinect is going to be US and then maybe later Europe - depending upon speed with which they localize it further.

Japan really isn't going to be worth any big investment for them I reckon.

No, not necessarily.  I've seen a lot of Kinect tech demos for PC coming out of Japan so it's reasonable to assume that at least some of those are being sold to people who probably don't even OWN an Xbox.  What the percentage is I have no idea but it definitely explains some of the sales.

I'm currently assuming that must be a small percentage - maybe a hundred or so at most to some people who like to mess around with the hacks, etc.  I doubt a majority of Japanese Kinect buyers are hooking it up to a PC.

Mind you, I understand in Japan PC = Porn games and there was that fondling title MS surpressed so who knows!!!

Either way, the higher sales of Kinect to 360 still clearly indicate that purchasers are either existing 360 owners or buying it for other PC centric purposes - neither of which is really expanding the 360 base in Japan - it's interesting to note that despite Kinect sales the baseline sales of 360 itself have remained essentially unchanged, indicating that so far Kinect has had next to zero impact on the console's demand at all.

I just figure MS won't ignore the huge percentage skew to US for 360/Kinect in December with solid EMEAA numbers and focus there.  1.5 million consoles in Japan in the current console climate isn't worth anything, particularly the way console games tend to sell there at the moment.  MS clearly need to focus on US first, centre countries in Europe second and see how high they can push 360 before the start of the next gen.

Too much extra effort in the wrong place now, 5 years after launch is just wasted effort that could instead take MS further ahead elsewhere.

I'm not saying they abandon Japan, but it's seems fairly clear that MS has made near enough as much headway in Japan as it's sensibly going to with the 360, while there is plenty of life (and a ton more growth) available elsewhere.