shikamaru317 said:
Machiavellian said:
Cracking Japan is why GP is for. Mobile is the driving force in Japan when it comes to games and GP getting on those phones and allowing those gamers to play with their phones open up a lot of avenue for investment. I doubt we are going to see any exclusives from japan instead as Ryu stated just getting to parity for 3rd party games is probably the focus.
If anything, getting a few day one releases on GP and those games really taking off is probably more of the focus for MS then trying to get exclusives since such an endeavor seems way far fetched at this point in time. I believe if MS had to pick, paying for exclusive game for some limited amount of time or getting the game on GP day one, I believe they would go with GP every single time. If Tomb Raider was a wake up call for MS, limited timed exclusives when you are not the market leader really does not gain you any sells. Why waste that money when you can spend it on increasing the value of GP. |
I would agree with that statement when it comes to sales in the west, timed exclusivity doesn't help Xbox much unless it's something absolutely massive (we're talking like a CoD or GTA timed deal), but Japan is a whole different beast. Exclusive Japanese developed content is a big deal, there aren't enough Japanese fans of western games for a console to succeed without exclusives. 360 proved that timed exclusive deals do work in Japan, even though PS2 and PS3 were dominating Xbox 360 in marketshare, we saw timed exclusives deals like Tales of Vesperia, Star Ocean The Last Hope, and Eternal Sonata move decent amounts of hardware and software sales when they released. Through a combination of lifetime exclusives and timed exclusives, MS managed to go from PS2 outselling OG Xbox by a factor of 46:1 in Japan to PS3 only outselling 360 by a factor of 6.5:1, and if Don Mattrick wouldn't have halted Peter Moore's AAA exclusives deal efforts after 2009, 360 would have sold even more in Japan, possibly more than 2.5m. In short, exclusives matter to the JP market, even timed exclusives. |
The problem is what Japan dev would take such a risk with the footprint of MS console in Japan. If MS can sell GP to Japanese gamers and really penetrate the market then I can see a few devs willing to take the risk but right now no.
Unfortunately for MS, that window of Japan developers exclusivity is gone. There is no way any of the developers are going to go down that route unless MS put up some really serious cash but if they are going to put up cash on that level, GP still wins out. Getting a few top games day one on GP sells not only GP but also MS consoles. The double punch is that those gamers can play on their mobile device and the console is a bigger value since mobile is so strong in Japan.
Hell, to keep the cost down, I am even going to go as far as MS going for region specific day one release. Sell hard to get Japanese only games day one on GP that sell to Japanese audience but not really the west which would gain even better upsell for the service. Since MS footprint in Japan is small, this would allow them to keep cost better in check but have a much better impact on the Japanese market. I know this route does not help gamers in the west but if it is successful the I can see those region specific day one release getting a global run.
