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Forums - Sales Discussion - SALES HARDWARE GERMANY : wii outsold 360

Louie on 18 August 2007
BrainBoxLtd said:
johnlucas said:

Is the 360 REALLY selling this badly in Germany. God!

It's been out over there since Dec. 2, 2005 for God's sake!

Almost 2 years and Wii beats 'em in 9 months!

Microsoft has some work to do over in the European region that's for SURE. Maybe they take those blue screen Windows crashes more seriously than we thought, huh? Elephant memory I guess.

John Lucas


It is no surprise ot me that the 360 bombs in Germany. Most of it's most popular games are rated M, and Germany have the harshest rules for software content. Gears of War went through about 8 re-edits for the German Version, and all were turned down in the rating process, so it never released over there, and that's the best selling game.


 Uhm, we are harsh yes, but not that harsh. Gears of War was the one single game which wasn´t rated by USK and unfortunately didn´t make it to the german market.

But the whole thing is not that serious, believe me. As far as I´m concerned all other 360 games made it to Germany. It is just not selling all too well. It is even  priced at 299 Euros in some stores (329 Euros together with (take a deap breath!) two games, two controllers and 3 months of XBox Live Gold - and we are talking about the Premium version here!), which is cheaper than the new US price...



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Yuk04 on 18 August 2007

I think that Microsoft's problem is that it considered Europe as a whole country, like if it were trying to sell the console to the States.

The Xbox 360 is a very good console, great lineup and an incredible online infrastructure but, you can't approach Spanish customers the same way as the Dutch ones, they are very different for so many reasons that you need to focus in a very different way for each one.

I think that the major problem is that the regular customer (the ones that would never visit a website like this one and just plays ProEvo and GTA) sees the 360 as a computer that gets plugged to the TV, and that you have to pay to play. Which of course is wrong but, that's the problem, Microsoft needs to teach people that the 360 is a console, like the PlayStation or the Nintendo (whichever iteration) to make sure that people would even consider having one on the leaving room.

And one of the reasons why the Wii is outselling the PS3 and the 360, apart from price, is tha tthe general customer, doesn't want to get an HD telly because then, everything that they plug looks worse. This is true, the general customer isn't aware of things like composite, component, HDMI and such, for them those are the tv that make things look worse.

A fascinating fact!

On the everybody votes channel, the last world poll was, do you have a wide screen tv?

And the answer was 51% no, 49% yes.

Useless to say that not everyone votes on the Wii channel but, nevertheless it has its veracity.

So if just the 49% of the world (Wii owners Channel users) has a wide screen tv, that means that just probably half of it has an HD tv.

I've got a wide screen tv but not HD.

Therefore the interest in purchasing a PS3 or 360 is not that big, as without an HD tv you wouldn't notice the real difference between the three consoles.



<iframe src="http://gamercard.xbox.com/YUK04.card" scrolling="no" frameBorder="0"

Just_Ben on 18 August 2007
Louie said:
BrainBoxLtd said:
johnlucas said:

Is the 360 REALLY selling this badly in Germany. God!

It's been out over there since Dec. 2, 2005 for God's sake!

Almost 2 years and Wii beats 'em in 9 months!

Microsoft has some work to do over in the European region that's for SURE. Maybe they take those blue screen Windows crashes more seriously than we thought, huh? Elephant memory I guess.

John Lucas


It is no surprise ot me that the 360 bombs in Germany. Most of it's most popular games are rated M, and Germany have the harshest rules for software content. Gears of War went through about 8 re-edits for the German Version, and all were turned down in the rating process, so it never released over there, and that's the best selling game.


Uhm, we are harsh yes, but not that harsh. Gears of War was the one single game which wasn´t rated by USK and unfortunately didn´t make it to the german market.

But the whole thing is not that serious, believe me. As far as I´m concerned all other 360 games made it to Germany. It is just not selling all too well. It is even priced at 299 Euros in some stores (329 Euros together with (take a deap breath!) two games, two controllers and 3 months of XBox Live Gold - and we are talking about the Premium version here!), which is cheaper than the new US price...


The next thing is, that Germans 18+ knows about these issues and know how to get to the games. Either let them import for you on special site, or just go to austria.  ;)

Last time i was on such a "import" shopsite, the most imported game was godfather for the Wii, by the way. 



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picsouuu on 18 August 2007

germany is a pc country and they can have bioshock , halo 2, gear of war,alan wake,...all great 360 exclusive so why purchase the 360? ps3 exclusive is only for ps3. 360 exclusive is for 360 and later for pc



Louie on 18 August 2007
RolStoppable said:
BrainBoxLtd said:
johnlucas said:

Is the 360 REALLY selling this badly in Germany. God!

It's been out over there since Dec. 2, 2005 for God's sake!

Almost 2 years and Wii beats 'em in 9 months!

Microsoft has some work to do over in the European region that's for SURE. Maybe they take those blue screen Windows crashes more seriously than we thought, huh? Elephant memory I guess.

John Lucas


It is no surprise ot me that the 360 bombs in Germany. Most of it's most popular games are rated M, and Germany have the harshest rules for software content. Gears of War went through about 8 re-edits for the German Version, and all were turned down in the rating process, so it never released over there, and that's the best selling game.


That shouldn't be a real problem. German gamers are used to censored versions and pretty well know how to get a version from Austria or Switzerland which also contains german screentext and/or voice acting.

As for GoW: The game didn't pass at the USK (equivalent of the american ESRB) and therefore wasn't officially released in Germany (just like the first God of War, although one year later Sony gave it another try and the USK gave it an 18+ rating and the game was finally officially released in Germany, uncensored). Gamers imported Gears of War nonetheless to play it. The game was still popular enough in Germany, it even made it on the index of the BPjM.

The real problems for Microsoft in Germany are:

  1. Big PC nation. People don't buy a console to play the same games they can get on the PC, especially FPS which are inferior on a console due to dual-stick-controls anyway.
  2. Germans don't spend much money on consoles. The 360 premium is already available for €300 at major retailers, including two games. Apparently that doesn't help much.
  3. Germans buy consoles mostly for casual games, even more so than other countries. Games like Singstar, Buzz and Eyetoy plus a price tag of €200/150 really sold the PS2 there (the PS2 started of very slow due it's initial price of roughly €450). Wii Sports is doing the job for the Wii, even at €250, the DS is easily outselling the PSP.
  4. Brand name. Sony was the dominating name the past two generations, Nintendo is still well recognised as family friendly (GC outsold Xbox in Germany).
EDIT: I spent way too much time on this post, everything I said, has been said in the mean time.

Read this post and you get everything Ben and I said before in a much more complex form. It explains the situation in an excellent way.

Great Post, Rolstoppable! 



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albionus on 18 August 2007

Well I don't think those numbers are particularly good fo anyone. Germany is a bigger country than the UK yet only about 1/3 as many consoles have been sold. I know it's already been said why that is. That just means all three console makers need to stop and think a little hard about how to break into Europe's biggest market.

Of course maybe they've decided that Germany isn't worth the effort despite the opportunity (seems an odd decision to me given how big of a market it could be) in which case good for Nintendo to at least have the biggest piece of a small pie.



Just_Ben on 19 August 2007

Another nice find:

http://www.welt.de/webwelt/article1071893/Neue_Spielekonsolen_loesen_Rekordboom_aus.html

The German market is growing fast. Total consoles sold in the first half of the year is about 1.3 Million consoles (home and hand held). That means a growth of 39%.



Join up to the VGC Mario Kart Wii GP European League!

Or the VGC Mario Kart Wii GP Australian League!

Or the VGC Mario Kart Wii GP American League!

Or the VGC Halo 3 American League!

Or the  VGC Call Of Duty PS3 League!

robjoh on 19 August 2007
RolStoppable said:
albionus said:

Well I don't think those numbers are particularly good fo anyone. Germany is a bigger country than the UK yet only about 1/3 as many consoles have been sold. I know it's already been said why that is. That just means all three console makers need to stop and think a little hard about how to break into Europe's biggest market.

Of course maybe they've decided that Germany isn't worth the effort despite the opportunity (seems an odd decision to me given how big of a market it could be) in which case good for Nintendo to at least have the biggest piece of a small pie.


There was a time when Germany was the most important market for consoles in europe right after the UK. France passed Germany many years ago and it doesn't help that 4+m people in Germany are out of work.

I think Nintendo is gaining a lot in Germany lately. The DS already passed the 2m mark after a little over 2 years (GBA LTD is 3.4m I think) and the Wii is selling well for this time of the year. Of course it's a given that the Wii will definitely pass the GC LTD of 1m, but in my opinion it has also a shot at beating the PS2 numbers long term.


Hasn't Germany always bean a big PC market? I have some old memory that Amiga and Atari should have been huge in Germany.



 

 

Buy it and pray to the gods of Sigs: Naznatips!

Ashadelo on 19 August 2007

It's only a mater of time till Wii overtakes the US as number 1 as well.



我是广州人

sharky on 19 August 2007

So why is everybody saying the 360 is doing poor when PS3 is barely doing better?

And PS3 is newer, and supposedly ms is dead in Europe except UK?

And all we have is 8,000 versus 5,000?

Great news for 360 imo.

Price drop could push it ahead of PS3 even in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain (already ahead in USA, Canada, UK, Australia)