Xbox 360 now struggling in Japan? |
Ó
Despite introducing a more affordable price point for the Xbox 360,
Microsoft did not enjoy as big a boom as Sony with the PS3
Slim-and-price-cut combo. Things are looking even more glum for
Microsoft in its competitors' home turf, Japan, where word is coming
out that the Xbox 360 is already struggling.Sharing his thoughts through his blog, a Japanese retailer employee described how Microsoft just didn't have a strong lineup back in TGS. "But all in all, there was nothing," he wrote, adding that what makes matters worse is that the the competition will be getting bigger exclusives that will widen the gap even more.
According to the last Media Create hardware chart, the Xbox 360 fell 12.57% the previous week, selling only 4,244 units.
The latest Media Create hardware chart:
Via Ameblo
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Comments [refresh]
Aww, this should have waited a few days, woulda been a great birthday present! But I guess early is better then never! Maybe on my birthday I'll wake up and find an article saying "Xbox 360 found to contain cancer-causing agents, Microsoft not able to keep up with lawsuits, filing bankruptcy"
That would make all my dreams come true
anyway seriously this was kinda to be expected with the weak line up of games the 360 has this year and the fact that it was never doing to good in japan i dont see how this wouldnt happen...
The Xbox has never really sold well in Japan so this isnt much of a surprise. Japan likes its pretty colours and kittens, not guns an blood :)
Actually Japan like products that work, has nothing to do with content. After all, Japan is one of the most advanced countries on the planet, you think them high tech Japanese people want to be caught with ah outdated Microsoft product that wont last long enough for them to figure out that its the only game console that charges them a fee to play online?
weeaboo detected
The 360 not doing so well has more to do with Japanese patriotism than anything else. The PS3 continues to fail on every single multiplatform release but you PS3 guys just keep burrying your heads further in the sand and tell us all about how devs are lazy and evil. They're all out to get you and other nonsense consipiracy theories. I wonder if the majority of PS3 owners also think the moon landing was a hoax. The pretty colours and kittens comment above is a bit inaccurate also, Japanese prefer things to be stylised and dramatic, aiming for realism in computer games is not something they strive for, that's a western thing.
I think if MS seriously thought they would take Japan away from the company that made the transistor take off, they were sadly mistaken. Sony is the main reason Japan exists as a technology leader, that naturally envokes a fair amount of patriotism and pride in a Japanese person. Without Sony grabbing the transistor Japan would be nothing like what we see today, I dare say the world in general would be a different place, for that we owe Sony a great deal of gratitude.
Regardless of that the 360 plays games better, Sony got punked this round by M$ getting a more efficient design for gaming (through questionable means). But yeah M$ should have thought twice if they thought they'd take out Sony in their own kingdom.
Nobody goes to a store and makes such a big purchase based on where it was made. Those Japanese are tech savvy and Microsoft has an awful track record of their products failing from windows, to 360 and anything in between.
Also they've got a weak line up of games for the rest of this year and for the foreseeable future. Especially compared to the ps3.
Sony started slow but they had a great plan all along to take the hit at the beginning of the console war but deliver on the quality their known for. Microsoft released a console that wasn't ready to be released and half of them broke, but all they care is they got that early lead on not only sales but development and some exclusives from being the only console on the market.
I mean Nintendo doesn't really have enough quality games but it sells well in Japan and you know why? Because its made from Japan. I bet if MS is a japanese company they would sell a lot and I don't really see a lot of western products in Japan that sells well. And which would you rather buy... a PS3 made from Japan or a PS3 made from China?
wii sold good everywhere because it appealed to casual gamers and costed half the price of its competitors at launch. im guessing most people in japan bought ps3s instead of xboxs because they thought ps3 would be the system with the most jrpg's. i dont know how tech savy they are, but they might have been persuaded by the cell processor too (i wouldnt even know what that does, but its advertised and sounds legit).
@avatar76
really? us ps3 guys keep burying our heads further in the sand? i dont know if multiplat games usually look better on 360 because of lazy devs or what, but you cant deny that the ps3 has way more potential than the 360. look at the exclusives. i havent really been following Uncharted 2, but from what ive seen its better visually than any xbox exclusive to this day.
So a retail employee says the 360s in his store aren't selling... Who cares? The PS3s in the local atlanta area dont sell. My friend works at Walmart and the 360 sells 3:1 there, another at Target sells about 4:1 in the 360s favor.
Does that mean anything newsworthy? Does it really matter?
Anyone who didnt know the 360 wasnt selling well in Japan is an idiot. it's always been that way. Yet its the most pervasive western piece of gaming hardware in the country. Moreso than even the PC. (I daresay the 360 is one of the most pervasive pieces of western technology, period. iPods werent even big over there last I visited. They tend to use Sony or Toshiba or some non-exported akihabara brand music players. Or their phones.)
Let's not start another console rant.
EVERYONE knows the 360 NEVER sold well in Japan. So this "article" is useless. Heck in some months even the PS2 outsells it. How sad is that?
ccnp exams
only 1nce it sold well in japan but it was for like only a week or so. So im not surprised that micro$oft is crying cus the 360 is failing in japan. In my eyes the 360 is outdated already and most of their games look like really good, smooth framerate, last generation ps2 games, and the only real reason ppl kept dishing out money on a defective product was because of the economy and it was cheap and u could play most of the latest games on it. Now that the PS3 is more affordable there was a HUGE spike in sales and is almost catching up to the 360 now. I dunno why some of u guys deny it (im not a fanboy by the way. I own all 3 current consoles and love videogames and like to speak the truth) THE PS3 is the best console out there hands down
in all those years of my life living in japan, i never encountered any person who even knew what processor is used on what system, not even the speed it is using. most gamers (even japanese ones) dont care what inside, its the games they go after, be it male or female. it just so happens that the wii and ds catered to grandma's and kids, the ps3 games catered to teens and adult whereas the the 360 games catered to the violent adult ignorant kids where such kind of people rarely exist in japan.
devs that makes poor game version on ps3 and wii are not lazy, they just have some personal grudge against sony and nintendo lol. i suspect there are limiting factors such as american patriotism, lack of skills or just plain stubbornness. Capcom never had such problem fact almost all japanese game devs never had a problem porting ps3 games to 360, they are always of equal quality, but these western/uk developers either makes a fail port of a 360 game to ps3 (valve and others) or uber better on ps3 (burnout paradise). i smell stupidity.
Only because Sony chose Blu-ray. Otherwise the 360 and PS3 are tied. Both have limited amount of good games.
no no no if a device works japanese people will buy it no matter who made it.
Ipods and iphone are pretty much winners in japan.
because they work and works in long time.
the 360 machines fails, japanese people are smart enough to figure out that its not wise to pay 399 for a system that will automatically break itself in 3 years tops. hell japanese people are still reselling Family Computers which are 26 year old machines.
i am a sony and nintendo fan and lived part of my life in japan, i also want a 360 but that rrod thing make me stray away from it. PC PS3 helped me cope without 360 and im not having problems in the last 4 years of gaming. im missing out some (ex gta4 expansions) but not that much.
Even though nobody might buy a console based on pure patriotism, don't you think the Japanese people trust their own Sony more than this "Microsoft" you speak of?
Sure, their computers might be running Windows but that's a different thing.
I think this could be compared to the following situation; almost everyone I know over here (Finland) uses a Nokia as their cellphone, while Nokia's cellphones might not be enjoying THAT much success in the other side of the world, while still being popular..
You, sir, sound like some kind of idealized weeaboo. I'm sorry, there are violent, psychotic people in Japan. I'm sorry, there are people in Japan who buy terrible, worthless hardware. They arent some perfect people like you ignorantly seem to be trying to spout.
Every game that moved a 360 console was a Japanese based game. They are, flat out, the most insular people in the world. Uncharted sold like crap in Japan. Was it a bad game. No. Yakuza, on the other hand, sold like frigging hotcakes. The sequel, even better, and Yakuza 3 sold over 200k games on its first day.
Oh wait, but Japan doesn't like violence! They are a perfect people who shoot rainbows from their heads and crap rainbows.
...Just, no, they are xenophobes, flat out. Guess who also lived there? Oh wait, me. Guess who grew up with them them? Went to school with them? Your ignorance is astounding. Please, go away. Its embarrassing to both me and the people you are trying to 'defend'
Indeed, almost catching up! PS3 only needs some odd seven million more units (Thats 7,000,000) to sell to get to the even mark! Well, that and get their attachment rate up considerably, since many PS3s sell as bluray players. (While its nice that they sell, if they arent bought by people intending to game, the sale is kind of a moot point.)
Anywho, anyone who says 'im not a fanboy i haz all 3!!11' tends to be a fanboy. Either present your opinion in such a way as to stop sounding so biased or dont even try to defend yourself.
One retail employee in one store says a console might not be selling well, and they amplify it way out of proportion.
The QJ staff should work for the New York Times, they're that good at spinning.
Um. The wii is selling well everywhere. The 360 isn't selling well because of poor product stability and a lacking library. It was doing well there when the ps3 was down and it had all of the JRPGS.
Now just about every studio is jumping ship to the ps3 and sales show it.
Don't try to play it off as something nationalistic because it isn't. If it was, ToV would have gone straight to the ps3 instead of the 360.
Its the same with the 360 in America. Its not selling the best here because microsoft is an american company. Its selling well because the game library of the 360 appeals more to an american audience.
Stop saying weeaboo. You sound stupid.
Now about "violent" games. I think its less to do with violence and more to do with guns.
Guns are illegal in Japan. Not even the cops carry guys. That means there aren't too many gun enthusiest in Japan if they have never even held one. They don't see the appeal and thus scoff at games that revolve around them. Yakuza is a game that they can relate to because the Yakuza exists in Japan.
Like somebody said before. The ipod is insanely popular in Japan but apple is an American company. The Japanese people love Harry Potter and Disney. Its not that they hate outside influence. It is that most outside influence isn't aimed towards what interest them.
If you have a game about a super macho chuck norris character going rambo on a city, it probably won't sell.
If you have a game about a teenage boy with a sword taking on mythical creates, it might do great.
Marketing. Its why the original xbox didn't even take off in Japan.
The ps2 has been out since 2000 and has sold something over 120 million units. Thats like 13mil a year. Catching up to the 360 won't be hard considering ps3 sales are going up while 360 sales are either stagnant or going down in a lot of regions. In fact, America is the only reason the 360 is still on top. The ps3 is less than 1million units behind in Europe and has been ahead in Japan for some time. Without the one year head start of the 360, the ps3 would be tied already.
I'll agree with avatar that multiplatform games do generally perform better on 360. However, the quality of first party games from the last year or so goes to PS3 hands down.
This is why I only buy first party games (except for 1) and am very happy doing so. If 3rd parties are just going to shovel out crap, why support them. Because although they do not put in the time to get their games running up to par on PS3, they also don't put in the time to make outstanding games in general. Basically the only company doing that is Capcom (and SF4 is the on 3rd party game I own, but RE and DMC were great as well)
xche78x DOES sound like a fanboy. Still that same, old crappy talk about how the 360 is unreliable because of RROD. This problem was mostly solved with the advent of the Falcon motherboard/chip (codename), and it's over a year already. Remember the PS3 also had overheating incidents and almost all lines of electronics gadgets from ANY brand will have units that fail. Production lines are not 100% perfect and some ship with defects. Sony isn't free from trouble. It's a simple thing to understand and not an argument in any console brand discussion anymore.
Also, you say you lived in Japan, but it doesn't sound like it. Where did you live? Yes, the japanese ARE protective of their home brands and while that might not factor 100% in their decision to buy a console, it DOES play a large role when choosing between Sony and Microsoft. The 360 is a very good console, as much as the PS3 (technically it can be that both tie when weighting all pros and cons of each archtecture), but apparently PS3 fanboys are too arrogant to admit that the 360 is the only console that has ever put a real threat to a Sony product in the video gaming department ever since Sony started in this business, because it IS that good.
with them going into bankruptcy the stock market will go even deeper into the sheeter and we all know what that means