Microsoft has insisted it remains committed to the Japanese market despite Xbox 360's struggles, but admitted: "It's a challenging market."
Earlier this week we revealed the extent of the Xbox 360's Japanese woes, with sales down 46.7 per cent year on year, retailers beginning to phase out the console, and its last high-profile exclusive heading to PS3 following dismal sales. At this week's Gamescom in Cologne, Eurogamer asked Microsoft's executive VP of interactive entertainment in Europe, Chris Lewis, if the company was considering admitting defeat.
"No, of course we're not pulling out," he said. "It's a challenging market. We are up against very strong competition there. We're very respectful of what Sony and Nintendo do, and where they've come from, and what they bring."
Lewis then said that Microsoft's motion-sensing peripheral, which has done much to extend the 360's lifespan in the west, will keep the console afloat in Japan.
"Nintendo, particularly with the Wii, have opened up a market opportunity there," he said. "We've leapfrogged that handheld technology with Kinect. What we're seeing is users love using their own body without worrying about how to work a controller.
"So we see ourselves as, frankly, a company that does bring an awful lot of firsts, and we've enjoyed fabulous success with Kinect."
Lewis pinning his hopes on Kinect is a curious move. Retailers said the peripheral was "off to a pretty rough start" within days of its launch last November, and it was revealed soon after that it had sold 26,000 units in the week of its release, its best-selling game selling 6,000 units and entering the all-formats software chart in a lowly 24th place.
By the end of 2010 it had sold 90,000 units and, while we've not seen any sales data since, Japan's Xbox boss Takashi Sensui admitted last month that Kinect sales had failed to meet internal expectations.
However, at last year's Tokyo Game Show Microsoft announced five Kinect exclusives made by Japanese developers, and Lewis hinted that Microsoft has more up its sleeve for this September's show. "Japan remains important to us," he said. "We're very committed to that market. The development community there is very important. Tokyo Game Show will be a notable element in the year as usual."
Source: Eurogamer
Comments
27"Nintendo, particularly with the Wii, have opened up a market opportunity there"
This coming from the same company that said, when the Wii launched, that they're not even in the same market and therefore not competing.
MS has to struggle in Japan because it looks bad if they back out and who will want to develop for the system that reaches fewer markets? Otherwise they'd have probably backed out ages ago.
Business and ignorance don't mix.
Wii fit was a major seller in Japan , so long as the Nyko zoom works and is bundled with Kinect , I don't see any reason why similar games (Fitness Evolved etc) can't enjoy success as well.
PRIDE. Their own pride prevents tham from conceeding defeat.
MS have struggled in Japan because the Japanese tend to be quite inward facing (read slightly racist) and only buy Japanese products. Many products that are huge in the west fail to sell in Japan. I think with 1.5m sold MS have actually done pretty well.
I've read something slightly racist but I guess the irony of your post has probably gone right over your little head.
Jesus christ i'm not being racist, i'm just saying how i've seen these things work, first hand. Around ten years ago I worked on a platform game on the ps2 which we had to release the japanese version under a fake japanese sounding company name to have any chance of sales. Why do you think it took GTA over 5 years to be released over there, same goes for gears and many other AAA titles? That's all fine though, just throw unfounded acusations around, it's more your style.
jb1: That wasn't what you said originally, sure I can understand and believe that there are cultural differences that are peculiar to each territory that inform the types and genres of games that they prefer.
However you originally said that the Japanese haven't bought the 360 because of an anti-American bias, you're implying that the Japanese are inward looking and xenophobic which is an argument that relies on out-dated and offensive stereotyping of the Japanese. In short, you were being 'slightly racist' yourself.
You can continue to throw your dolly out of your pram because people have pulled you up on it but please don’t act surprised.
Yes if you ignore that other American companies, like Sega, have done much better over there.
How could you not know that Sega are Japanese? They pretty much were the Japanese games inustry for the better part of a decade.
They may be considered Japanese now but it started off as an American company. You could have easily verified that with wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega
Sega, as we know them are a Japanese company. Also if you want to get really pedantic then Hawaii was not even part of America during the period they were headquatered there so no, they are not and have never been American.
Hawaii was a British territory so it was a western nation still, Sega, under that name started in 1965 after Hawaii was a state and in the end it doesn't matter when it's Americans that were running it.
Even Edge/ Next Gen ran an article discussing their American routes probably about a decade or so ago.
You are nitpicking in the extreme, cut the shit. Sega, the videogame company are Japanese, nobody gives a crap whether or not they once had an office in Hawaii in the late 50's. The master system, genesis, saturn & dreamcast and all their first party games were made in Japan. Please stop labouring this stupid, stupid point.
You don't really know what you're talking about do you? Is Microsoft an Indian company because they have thousands of employees in India?
Sega had developers in both the US and Japan.
Why do people think there are no one bu Japanese people in Sega? Because they can make games the Japanese love. Sega can make games that appeal to everyone and Microsoft can not which was my original point. The Japanese aren't racist they just don't like rubbish games or overly Americanised shooters.
Guess what a lot of people don't like the fact nearly everyone in games are the same American stereotypes and it porbably explains why most of their success is only in North America
I think Apple does really well in Japan. I think the real reason the 360 has not sold well it because unlike the rest of the world, the Japanese will not buy rubbish.
I'm not saying that the 360 is rubbish, but that if you rememeber when the orginal xbox launched over there, Microsoft refused to acknowledge or fix the disc scratching issues with the console.
Couple that with the RROD issues this gen and you can see why they avoid it like the plague.
They are much less forgiving than the west.
"the Japanese will not buy rubbish"
The japanese software charts are regularly full of horse dating simulators and other crap, the japanese are hardly ultra savy consumers. Western games don't sell well in japan for the same reason a western console hasn't sold very well and that is because the japanese, by and large will only buy japanese products.
Considering there are certain genres westerners don't cover they don't have much choice.
I think this idea that Japanese people don't buy western stuff is mainly just an excuse to say why MS hasn't done well at all over there. After all being American didn't stop Sega from doing well. The thing is MS hasn't done that well in most of Europe too.
Simply put outside of North American MS doesn't do that well because their games are very narrow in their focus and it's a big problem for them because they really only have one strong market and that's why Sony managed to catch up to them despite being 3rd in the US.
You need to stop typing. The bizarre Sega comment aside, how is Microsoft's line of games narrow? They actually had way more JRPG's than Sony for the majority of the generation as well as plenty of 2d shoot em'ups, stuff the japanese market really enjoy.
Or you could read up on Sega's history on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega
Of course no one has mentioned the hypocrisy of hating on the Japanese for not playing western games when westerners won't play more eastern games hence companies like Capcom feel the need to westernise their games. So are westerners racist?
Look at Edge's top 100 games of all time, Japanese games cover the top 3 before we start to see some western titles, there's a decent spread of titles throughout the top 100. Now look at the Famitsu top 100, the first western game comes in at position 76 (vice city) and a total of 3 western titles make the top 100. You don't have to be Hercule Poirot to see that there is more at play here than differing tastes. The same kind of pattern can be seen in the weekly JP/US game charts. I'm not saying it's a big issue or that it particularly bothers me, it is however a reality.
For at least 20 year Japan on its own dominated console gaming. Of course most of the top 100 games are Japanese. It's also a testament to Japan's ability to make games that appeal to al nations.
Where as most western made games made now appeal only to westerners and even then not even all of the west which is why Sony and Nintendo are doing quite well in Contintental Europe.
And if we're talking about western gamers in this era if they were so accepting of Japanese games then why the need for companies to westernise their games?
My point is the implication that the Japanese are racist despite the fact that they do consume lots of western media and products purely because they completely ignore Microsoft is laughable at best. Microsoft's appeal isn't that great worldwide they've just done really well (but obviously not as good as Nintendo) in the markets in some markets.
I wouldn't dispute that in the top 100 games of all time, there would be a lot of Japanese games, but to suggest that no western developed game is worthy of a place under number 76 is simply wrong. Off the top of my head - Halflife 1 / 2, Command and Conquer, Oblivion, Doom, COD 4, Elite 2, Geometry Wars, Civ, Bio Shock, World of Warcraft, Left 4 Dead, Quake 3, Burnout, Metroid Prime, Gears, WipeOut, Mass Effect. Surely one of those games should show up, plenty of genres there to choose from and certainly not all on xbox, no??
My point is that the edge list was well balanced, the famitsu one, not so much. The UK/US charts tend to be well balanced, the JP charts not so much. Once again i'm not saying that this is a terribly bad thing or that they are being overtly racist, maybe if us brits had supported the british car industry back in the day then we would still have a car industry. No my point is simply that what i'm saying does go on and always has, it's a well known phenomenon in the games industry.
I think most people do consider some of those be excellent games with the exception of Gears. Sorry, that's crap. A lot of your list is first person shooters and not everyone likes first person shooters.
Then there is the fact taht supposedly Japanese people are more prone to motion sickness playing FPS games. If that's true is it any surprise they hardly buy western games when western developers are lazy and jsut knock FPS after FPS?
I have a theory too. On the 360s release i think that the japanese were wary of buying a western console because they didn't believe it would be supported with the kind of software that they prefer. A few years down the line and the ps3 and wii (mostly ps3) have plenty of japaneezee games while the 360 is still lacking. Sales were poor so japanese developers were kind of wary of releasing culturally japanese games for it. In the end it all comes down to the age old issue which leads to dead consoles, no games. 360 japan has no games that the japanese want to play, thus it becomes a dead console over there. Thats just my theory of course. I can't prove it obviously.
Where's the flag as offensive button gone btw? Is it coming back? A flag as just plain fucking stupid button would probably do in a pinch.
I have a pretty good idea which stupid and offensive posts you like to flag, some of the crap I read on here is beyond belief sometimes.