| kowenicki said: No surprises. Japan is widely regarded as an insular and protectionist society for a very good reason. It is. |
To be fair though a lot of foreign companies like Apple, BMW, Coca Cola, Harley Davidson, Louis Vouitton etc. have been very sucessful on Japan. Yes you need a very specific and precise handling of the business market to succeed in Japan... as you need basically everywhere else in the world but WE and NA.
Some comments on the article were very insightful on mentioning how the Xbox brand was tainted by the perception of something drawing on the worst possible american imagery you could convey out of the english world and that's very worring since so far MS hasn't done much to combat or prevent it. Right now the US and the UK consist of about 28% of the world's economy; when the Xbox franchise launched, it was 38%. And yet another MS console will end up last throughout most of the world bar those countries, even on a lower pricepoint and with a one year headstart. How is it going to be for Microsoft a decade from now, when the US and the UK become less than 20% of the world's economy?
