Hawkeye on 15 June 2008
| greenmedic88 said: Branding is one of the bigger issues. And a large part of the Xbox image problem is that console gaming in the mind of the typical Japanese gamer has always been a Japanese brand industry. Any chance MS had to change that was lost with the relative failure of the original Xbox. The MS name, after two generations of consoles, has become Japan's Sega in that market, even while it continues to soldier on in NA. Part of the other issue seems to be MS lack of ability to adapt to current changes in the Japanese gaming market. Hardcore gaming is definitely in decline in Japan, yet MS continues to push that angle as a means to keep the system alive (on life support) in that region. Personal opinions aside about JRPGs, the format has remained largely unchanged since its original inception. It may well just be that the Japanese gamers simply aren't bullish enough about them anymore to buy another console. The release of FFXIII for the PS3 should be a good test to see whether this is the case or not. If it sells mediocre and provides only a modest but short lived bump in hardware sales, consider this confirmed. |
Microsoft can turn things around. Keep in mind the Sega Saturn was pretty big in Japan.
