microsoft giving up japan?

[MikeB]

NJ5 said:

MikeB said:

@ NJ5

FFXIII is probably PS3's last hope for Japan, and only god knows when that one's coming out.

It's the most high profile game we know about for the Japanese market, but far from being the platform's "last hope". At least I certainly think a Slimline PS3 will have a huge impact on Japanese sales. Last year everyone wrote off the PSP for Japan, but just one interesting new game and redesign later and the console even outsells the DS by hundreds of thousands more units for this year so far.

OK, add a "PSP-like miracle" to the list of PS3 hopes. Even if that's the case, by that time the Wii will have already cemented the position it's now quickly building in the Japanese console market.

 

I don't think the PS3 or 360 would have sold much better for Japan at this point if there wasn't a Wii.

The PS3 is IMO really far more geared towards the future (a radically new and daring design), it wasn't build to sell like a PS2 right out of the gates (just imagine the costs!). It's technical design is more geared towards providing consumers reasons to upgrade towards HDTV, adopt Blu-Ray technology, set a good fundamental for the platform to have a good basis for creating the most impressive games for many years to come, marginalize the PC gaming market even further, counter piracy issues, pave the way for future Playstation technology, etc.

A PS2.5 could have been placed within the market to compete with the Wii, but this would IMO go against all of Sony's long term goals and ambitions (and leave the PC/360 without high end competition). I don't think the Wii competes directly enough for Wii owners to not buy into PS3s eventually. I think the Japanese in general do care about technically impressive and beautiful looking RPG and other types of games and they will be well served on the PS3 for the long run.