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Forums - Microsoft - Why Did Xbox 360 Fail in Japan?

DirtyP2002 on 02 April 2013

Japanese ALWAYS prefer the Japanese alternative over the competition.
Way before the iPhone was released and Nokia was the dominant pkayer in the cell phone market, Nokia had to give up the Japanese market.

Mercedes, BMW, VW, Audi and Porsche (Yes, I am German) have a really hard time over there. Japanese prefer Japanese cars. Sure, after leading the market for a century, they have their fair market share, but nowhere near the numbers in other regions (China, Europe, NA).

The only two exceptions I can think of are

Microsoft (with Windows),
Apple (And the iPad in Japan is not as dominant as it is here)

 

Yahoo Japan (independent entity from Yahoo! corporate) even dominates Google.

 



Imagine not having GamePass on your console...

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kennyrester on 02 April 2013
Somini said:
kowenicki said:
Good old gaming journalists... I see he has used Wiki as his source. Now if only he had looked at a proper source... i.e. Media Create, he would see that the sales of the original xbox aren't anywhere near 2m.

Media create says it sold as follows:

2002 327,700
2003 96,900
2004 35,300
2005 13,200

so Xbox total sales are 473,100 , which is roughly inline with what the VGC numbers used to be here.

So actually the xbox install base in Japan has improved 300% gen over gen. Still a very low number but its upwards by a significant amount and not down by a significant amount like this crappy "journalist" thinks.

This is from IGN. And we all know that it doesn't get better than that. Now that doesn't mean that IGN is good, just that the rest are MUCH worse. This is after all, gaming journalism we are talking about here.


Seriously?

Here's a much, much better article on the subject that Eurogamer published a couple of months ago, although this one is about why the Xbox brand failed, not just the 360.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-12-13-why-xbox-failed-in-japan

Again it's not exactly Pulitzer winning stuff but Eurogamer, and many other sites, mop the floor with IGN.



vfguy on 02 April 2013

The Japanese game industry is quirky.

Here are a few examples:
-The PSP continues to do very well compared with everywhere else.
-The Sega Saturn outsold the N64.
-The 3DO did okay.
-The Megadrive/Genesis was not very popular.
-The MSX and PC Engine were quite popular in their day



crissindahouse on 02 April 2013

why is the japanese car market 95% only japanese cars? maybe because they try to avoid something not japanese as long as they don't think it's really much better as their own counterpart. if the same console would have been from sony or nintendo, sales would have been much better the first years and with that the following years would have been better as well with better support of japanese companies.

sure there are examples of american companies successful in japan, i believe the iphone is a success there but i once saw a list of product sales in japan, from cars to fridges to radios and whatever and every top ten was almost only from japanese companies with very few exceptions.



tres on 02 April 2013
Somini said:
HappyHenry said:
He right they are loyal to domestic companys. xbox will never sell in japan they need to focus on the markets their strongest in.

Isn't that the same reason why the 360 is selling much better than the competition in the US?

nope because americas only wave the usa flag when it comes to politics.  the usa usa chant is worthless. 

once again looking at the percentage of 360 vs ps3 in america  vs the penny gap in japan.

they are country loyalist we are not. 



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Somini on 02 April 2013
axumblade said:
Wut....

VGChartz has the original xbox at .53 million in sales in Japan...The Xbox 360 is well over 1 million higher in sales than the xbox according to the site as well. This has been the case for well over a year now. Where did they get the 2 million in sales in Japan for the original xbox?

On another note, there were a lot of reasons why the 360 stopped selling in Japan. The main reason, other than the rumor of them disliking countries from other countries would be the promise of exclusives that turned out to come to other systems. While Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon maintained exclusivity in Japan, more well known titles like Star Ocean and Tales of Vesperia turned into multiplatform titles, which led to the Japanese people losing trust in the "exclusivity" route.

Yeah i remember the 360 sold like 40000 consoles in Japan the week Blue Dragon was released.



tres on 02 April 2013

if microsoft came up with a kinect game peeking up school girl skirts it would sale like hotcakes



Somini on 02 April 2013
tres said:
if microsoft came up with a kinect game peeking up school girl skirts it would sale like hotcakes


You are discriminating the japanese. You know that, right?



S.T.A.G.E. on 02 April 2013
HappyHenry said:
He right they are loyal to domestic companys. xbox will never sell in japan they need to focus on the markets their strongest in.


The Xbox was focused on offering the same exact thing the PS3 offered. In Japan if an outsider company tries to do that in any occurance they lose. If they change it up and do somethhing different then they pique the interest of the Japanese. 



tres on 02 April 2013
Somini said:
tres said:
if microsoft came up with a kinect game peeking up school girl skirts it would sale like hotcakes


You are discriminating the japanese. You know that, right?


not discriminating stereotyping but i can guarantee it would sell