MS Says Xbox 360 Sales Were "Not Low" In Japan

[freedquaker]

There are a few reasons why MS cannot sell much in many countries...

a) They don't have a "customer" culture. Their success is wrapped around either a "lock-in" model, in which the chicken & egg hump takes place such as the fact that everyone uses "windows" because everybody else is using windows (due to "first-move" advantage and seizing the historical opportunities). Their success at home (North America and other English-speaking countries) comes from "heavy advertising", and "tons of money pouring" to various causes. The result is lots of EMPTY market share (market share without any profits). They just cannot continue the same policy for the rest of the world since costs are much higher than benefits; so either the benefits are too low (e.g. South America) or costs are too high (e.g. Japan).

b) Microsoft has a level of bureaucracy with an unnecessarily intricate and crawling corporate mechanism, which makes next to impossible understanding the cultures beyond the immediate peripheral.

c) Microsoft has a dominant geek culture, which doesn't put enough effort and wit on aesthetics and design. Their products usually don't just have the appeal. Even when they do, they are crippled with incompetent software or ecosystem. One major example is surface, which was a technically excellent hardware with really awful usability, being a 16/9 cumbersome and heavy device that needs to be used with a keyboard mostly, shipping with a DESKTOP OS, and and a flagship software (Office) that is not crippled but also obviously not designed to work on touch, but confined to work on the desktop environment which has no other real uses! Such contrasts are not welcome in consumer's mind, and will only appeal to geeks who know how to take care such issues.

The reasons may be elaborated...