Angelus said:
See, this right here, is the shit that pisses me off. You lead your post with "oh it doesn't matter how I personally feel about such and such, this shit is important for the future of the health of Xbox in Japan, and getting more Japanese games for the rest of us!" But then a couple paragraphs later it's "oh but these Japanese games aren't the RIGHT Japanese games, and even the ones that are available on Xbox for me to buy, that I would like, I can't, so I'm just waiting and waiting for everything to be the way I want it to be..." Yea, ok. Big shocker that a lot of Japanese devs may not think it's worth their time doing Xbox ports, if the Xbox fans who supposedly care about Japanese games actually just sit around do precisely jack shit to show that they actually care in the one way the means something to a business. Aka, spending time and money on the games that are actually available. Everything isn't gonna be on GP. Sometimes, if you really want a game, you're simply gonna have to buy it. The economic reality is that Xbox and PS do not have the same exact audiences. GP subscribers and PS whatever tier subscribers will not have largely the same expectations, purchasing habits, or general gaming interests. It doesn't make sense for MS to invest a bunch of money in adding tons of Japanese games to GP, if their data shows that only a tiny fraction of their subscribers are going to engage with that content, and/or only a tiny amount of new subscribers are gained. If something matters to YOU, then put your money where your mouth is. Your fellow Xbox gamers in this thread just made Persona 5R their GotY for 2022. Hell, even I played it, and I had literally 0 emotional investment in it ever coming to Xbox. You know who didn't play it? The one person in this thread that never fucking stops going on about Japanese games. It's getting old. And hey, I get it, we all have time, and budget restraints that keep us from doing certain things, but all companies can do is look at what you ARE actually prioritizing when you are in fact playing games, and you're clearly NOT prioritizing Japanese games. |
Sorry for the late response, was playing some Hogwarts Legacy xD
You can't judge the entire Xbox fanbase as not buying Japanese games simply because I often don't. I'm a special case, my gaming budget is ridiculously tiny, on a good year these days I may spend $200 on games, often less. So yes, I am quite choosy about what I buy, and wait for deep, deep discounts, often as much as 70% or 80% off the launch price. My buying habits with Japanese games very likely don't reflect the Xbox fanbase overall in the slightest. It's silly to say that those like me are the reason that Japanese publishers often ignore the Xbox fanbase. We have proof of Japanese games that sold well on Xbox and still the publisher abandoned us, FFXV being a prime example, all evidence points to it's lifetime sales on Xbox One being in the neighborhood of 1.5-2m, and yet Square hasn't released a single mainline FF game on Xbox since, they took Sony hat money instead. And yes, I spent $70 on the FFXV deluxe edition at launch, it was one of the few games I didn't wait for deep discounts on, one of the reasons I bought it full price is because I hoped strong sales at full price would convince Square to bring more support Xbox's way, but sadly things didn't really work out that way.
I'll agree with you that Xbox has done a good bit to win more Japanese support in recent years, but I can't agree they are doing everything they can be doing. Take a look at Nihon Falcom for instance, they have even put their games onto Stadia and Luna, 2 completely untested platforms, one of which flopped hard, and yet they still haven't put their games onto Xbox, even though Gamepass and xCloud were far more sure of a thing than Stadia or Luna, which tells me Xbox has never even talked to Nihon Falcom most likely. They could also actually acquire some Japanese studios like the head of Xbox Asia told us they were attempting to do 2 or 3 years ago now, and no I don't buy the claim that they tried and failed to make any acquisitions there, with the number of Japanese studios that were struggling financially in recent years and having to turn to Chinese investment just to survive, surely some studio would have leapt at the chance of guaranteed paychecks from Xbox if Xbox had actually tried to acquire them.
Sometimes you have to throw money at a problem to get somewhere. Peter Moore understood that, it is why he moneyhatted so many Xbox 360 Japanese exclusives, those deals grew Xbox from 500k to 1.6m in Japan while also driving increased Xbox sales among western fans of Japanese games, and they would have driven even more sales if Don Mattrick had not put a stop to those deals halfway through the generation to focus on chasing Wii with Kinect instead. Xbox could have grown a lasting and permanent Japanese gaming fanbase for generations to come if Mattrick hadn't screwed it all up in the 2nd half of the generation an then again with Xbox One. The damage he did to Xbox's relationship with Japan and Japanese developers has lasted for years and will last for years further into the future. I honestly think pulling a Peter Moore and throwing money at Japan is Xbox's only realistic way to repair the remaining effects of Mattrick's blunders in Japan in any sort of reasonable time frame.
As for Persona 5, I would ask that you please not judge me as being some fake Japanese gaming fan simply because I haven't played it. I have various reasons for not playing it and may or may not play it in the future. No single game is going to appeal to everyone, we shouldn't use rather or not somebody played a certain Japanese game as some kind of mark of how serious they are about caring about Japanese games. I never claimed to be the biggest fan of Japanese games in this thread, I don't know where you would have gotten the idea that I was. My gaming habits lean more western than Japanese, always have. That being said, I know people on Xbox who play alot more Japanese games than I do and I feel for their plight, which is why I advocate on their behalf. I wanted Persona to come to Xbox because I knew people, both within the thread and outside of it, who wanted to play it, and that is more than enough reason for me to have pushed for it to come to Xbox, even though I personally was never all that hyped for it. One reason I wanted to win Atlus support on Xbox was because I hope to see Project ReFantasy on Xbox, that seems like it may be more my speed than Persona.
I also find it odd that you think I never stop talking about Japanese games on Xbox, to me it feels like 2 or 3 posts per month most months. You make it sound like I talk about it practically daily. I'll occasionally complain when I see a JP game leaving Gamepass with none coming in to replace it that same month, or if somebody else is discussing Japan like Slade I will join in and talk about it a bit, usually positive things in those conversations. If my infrequent posts about it bother you that much, you should be glad you don't travel in my circles, I know people who complain about Xbox's JP issues far more often than I do, some of them talk about it pretty much a few times a week as most of the games they play are Japanese and more than 2/3rds of all JP games skip Xbox, so pretty much every time a JP game they are interested in is announced as skipping Xbox they complain about it.
Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 15 February 2023
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