microsoft giving up japan?

[omoneru]

@EaglesEye379

>> With Japanese consumers always being loyal to Japanese products (except Windows) what did you guys expect in regards to hardware? Its like the car industry, like selling GM, Ford in Japan.

You can't attribute the failure of Microsoft to the "Japanese only like Japanese hardware" claim, because that is not quite true.

There are a number of hardware companies (or manufacturing in general) that succeeded in the Japanese market, including Dell, HP, Apple, Daimler, and BMW. If you look beyond manufacturing -- pharmaceutical, apparel, finance, industrial software, foods, etc -- there are a great number of companies that have been very successful in the Japanese market. The Japanese people don't discriminate foreign products or services simply because it's foreign.

You may wonder why MS failed then.

I once worked for a company that did some market research for Ford. Ford was wondering why they couldn't sell their cars in Japan.

Then-Ford Japan failed mainly because their business practice was based on the assumption that whatever strategy they implemented successfully in the U.S. or Europe should work well in Japan. This is the fallacy that the game division of MS Japan fell into.

Think about what MS Japan did to sell XBOX360.

The poor hardware (You can never expect to succeed in Japan with such a high failure rate), the initial lack of software library that would appeal to Japanese audience (FPS or some action game with macho American hero characters won't interest them), and Bad PR (Do you even know how ridiculous the commercial they put on TV was?).

If you want to compete in the market with different preferences, you have to carefully tailor your business strategy specifically for the market. MS simply did not. That's why they failed.

>> Unless things drastically change in the developers community, I think its more a case of Japan better hope Microsoft does not give up on them, or HD Japanese games are going to go another step backwards.

I sort of lol-ed while reading this statement. Ask regular gamers in Japan if they should be worried about MS leaving Japan. I'm sure you'll get tons of LOL.

They don't need to "hope Microsoft does not give up on them". They don't care about MS. They don't want to play Gears of War, Halo, GTA, Madden, or whatever American FPS/Sports/Sandbox/etc. Most of them don't even care about HD games either. Handheld (PSP,DS,MobilePhone) and Wii are what they want. Those who want HD look for Sony.

You can't just project to the market what you want them to want. Different consumer preferences do exist, whether we like them or not. Those who don't adapt simply fail businesswise.