Chevy Nova FTL...Naming your car "don't go" doesn't help sales much.

Yeah, MS should have gone with a different title. 

yea i heard about those too... it probably would have helped but like you said it would have driven up costs... i think they cancelled it at ces when warner announced blu ray

Now ho-o-o-old on there, pardner!  There's plenty reason why Microsoft would want to keep the Xbox name.  After all, why did Sony choose to keep the Playstation brandname for all its consoles?  I'm not saying that the Xbox line is as successful as the Playstation line, but Microsoft has invested a hefty chunk of change to drop the Xbox name on a whim.  You may think MS should drop that name, and that may or may not happen, but to say that there is no reason to keep Xbox in the console's name is a bit silly.

I also don't buy the assertion that the two-syllable Xbox sells poorly because the name doesn't roll off the Japanese tongue.  If that were the case, then why isn't the three-syllable Playstation name a hinderance to its success?  And even if your initial assertion were correct, why would you suggest "360 Slim"?  Wouldn't 360 be equally hard, if not harder, for the Japanese to pronounce?  Or would you prefer that they say "sanhyaku rokujuu" [or something like that--forgive me if my Japanese is rusty] instead?

In my experience--from my observations--the Japanese are enamored with the English language.  English words and phrases show up in J-pop songs quite often, with wanton disregard to the invariably mangled pronunciations.  I used to watch a television show, Hagure Keiji, on my locale's Japanese station.  I found it amusing that, in one episode, the protagonist's twenty-somthing daughter was wearing a t-shirt that read "Asphyxiation."  I'll grant you that "Xbox" isn't a word that shows up in many dictionaries, but try asking a Japanese citizens walking down Amakara Avenue the definition of "asphyxiation."  Try asking them to prounounce it.

There are indeed good reasons why the 360 sells poorly in Japan.  I just think that the name isn't one of those reasons.

 No, sorry to burst your bubble.  Microsoft paid a Japanese company to design the looks of the Xbox 360.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/xbox-360/japan-yes-japan-acknowledges-xbox-360s-sleek-design-207038.php

I used to think that if Sega would have allowed Microsoft to buy them that they could have branded and handled the Japanese launch of the console. But the Dreamcast only sold about two million in Japan so even doing that probably would have likely only gotten Microsoft an additional two million in sales above what the 360 is likely to get using it's own brandname over it's lifetime.

The honest fact is that Microsoft is an american company and Japanese people like to support their own, i know this for a fact when i stayed at camp Zama base last year, i asked why american games do so poorly there and the owner of a gaming shop in Tokyo told me that most japanese game players dont think to highly of anything american in the business.
Microsoft did make a very hard push but it did not work out.

Yea you are wrong take a look around next time you are in Japan and look at all the people walking around with ipods and other american made products.  Please don't make the Japanese people out to be American hating, they are just XB hating.

Re-read my post, i was talking about the gaming business.

Geez, did you not read the part where i said i was asking about why american videogames didnt sell well and how the game store owner told me GAMERS did not think highly about anything american in the BUSINESS.

I would say a redesign and new name for japan would have seen Japanese sales double to what they are now.