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Xbox is a Failure (in Japan)

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Xbox is a Failure (in Japan)

Old 04-18-04, 12:47 PM
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The Ford Explorer was built to satisfy American consumers, who are biggest consumers of SUVs on the planet. In fact, if you go to the Ford Japan site, they list it as an "American SUV". Many car companies redesign their vehicles for the particular audience. The Ford Explorer is not an example of that. Its failure in Japan would be due to that.

Nascar Racing and Basketball are both American sports. You do not see there equal in Japan because there are not particapates to compete. Both of them are not popular there because they have nothing to teams to call their own. Baseball, on the other hand, is very popular because they have their own league

Like all gaming consoles, the product is meant to appeal to all audiences. You have not seen and will never see a console producing company develope different consoles for different markets (except for color, which has nothing to do with the console design itself).

The Xbox was developed to compete in the 3 major videogaming areas: US, Japan, and Europe. As it was being designed, they were trying to implement ideas that would be accepted world wide. In fact, MS desided from the beggining that the normal Xbox control was too big for Japanese taste, and developed a smaller one for the Japanese market. Well, it turns out they needed the smaller controller all along as they stopped making the larger controller all together.

Don't try to rationalize this by saying that MS didn't design it for the Japanese market. It was intended to sell well in the Japanese market, and it came up way short. Selling 400K copies of GTA (which was not distributed by Rockstar in Japan, or intended to be released in Japan), is a great number considering how many systems were released. Games can only be compared percentage-wise to their consoles; consoles have to be compared to each other.

Those of you who are in love with your Xbox's need to realize that I only post this article for education. If the Xbox failed in Japan, do you think the Xbox2 will be similar to the first? NO! They are going to try again to build a machine that will span all countries. You need to take a step off of your cloud and realize taht I did not post this article to make the Xbox look bad, I only did so to spread news.
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Old 04-18-04, 12:54 PM
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It's always a nice reminder to see why the forum includes an Ignore List function.
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Old 04-18-04, 01:03 PM
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Originally posted by Fok
I don't think it was a good idea for Mircosoft to get into console games. Sony is just too strong and has better game developers on board.
I don't see how, considering that Sony leaped into a market with Nintendo and Sega and pretty much demolished Sega and pushed Nintendo far behind them. Microsoft took a gamble thinking they could do the same thing.
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Old 04-18-04, 01:10 PM
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Originally posted by fumanstan
I don't see how, considering that Sony leaped into a market with Nintendo and Sega and pretty much demolished Sega and pushed Nintendo far behind them. Microsoft took a gamble thinking they could do the same thing.
If you look at sales, Sony and Sega sales were pretty even until the release of FFVII. This was because Nintendo was going to stick with cart based consoles rather than going to disc. Square needed more room, so they went with the PlayStation. Microsoft needs to work more with Japanese gaming companies, like SqureEnix, to get there input. Unfortunately, the Japanese culture is one of isolation and superiority - its not going to be easy to break the love affair with Sony and Nintendo.

Microsoft either needs a huge game (yes, even bigger and better than Halo), or a huge break in technology which makes Japanese developers flock to them.
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Old 04-18-04, 03:24 PM
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Big In Japan
(Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan)

I got the style but not the grace
I got the clothes but not the face
I got the bread but not the butter
I got the winda but not the shutter

But I'm big in Japan I'm big in Japan But heh I'm big in Japan

I got the house but not the deed
I got the horn but not the reed
I got the cards but not the luck
I got the wheel but not the truck

But heh I'm big in Japan I'm big in Japan I'm big in Japan

I got the moon I got the cheese I got the whole damn nation
On its knees I got the rooster I got the crow
I got the ebb I got the flow

I got the powder but not the gun
I got the dog but not the bun
I got the clouds but not the sky
I got the stripes but not the tie

But heh I'm big in Japan I'm big in Japan I'm big in Japan

Heh ho they love the way I do it
Heh ho there's really nothing to it

I got the moon I got the cheese
I got the whole damn nation on their knees
I got the rooster I got the crow
I got the ebb I got the flow

I got the sizzle but not the steak
I got the boat but not the lake
I got the sheets but not the bed
I got the jam but not the bread

But heh I'm big in Japan I'm big in Japan I'm big in Japan
I'm big in Japan, I'm big in Japan
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Old 04-18-04, 03:35 PM
  #31  
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Originally posted by joshd2012
The Ford Explorer was built to satisfy American consumers, who are biggest consumers of SUVs on the planet. In fact, if you go to the Ford Japan site, they list it as an "American SUV". Many car companies redesign their vehicles for the particular audience. The Ford Explorer is not an example of that. Its failure in Japan would be due to that.

Nascar Racing and Basketball are both American sports. You do not see there equal in Japan because there are not particapates to compete. Both of them are not popular there because they have nothing to teams to call their own. Baseball, on the other hand, is very popular because they have their own league

Like all gaming consoles, the product is meant to appeal to all audiences. You have not seen and will never see a console producing company develope different consoles for different markets (except for color, which has nothing to do with the console design itself).

The Xbox was developed to compete in the 3 major videogaming areas: US, Japan, and Europe. As it was being designed, they were trying to implement ideas that would be accepted world wide. In fact, MS desided from the beggining that the normal Xbox control was too big for Japanese taste, and developed a smaller one for the Japanese market. Well, it turns out they needed the smaller controller all along as they stopped making the larger controller all together.

Don't try to rationalize this by saying that MS didn't design it for the Japanese market. It was intended to sell well in the Japanese market, and it came up way short. Selling 400K copies of GTA (which was not distributed by Rockstar in Japan, or intended to be released in Japan), is a great number considering how many systems were released. Games can only be compared percentage-wise to their consoles; consoles have to be compared to each other.

Those of you who are in love with your Xbox's need to realize that I only post this article for education. If the Xbox failed in Japan, do you think the Xbox2 will be similar to the first? NO! They are going to try again to build a machine that will span all countries. You need to take a step off of your cloud and realize taht I did not post this article to make the Xbox look bad, I only did so to spread news.
MS didn't design the xbox for the asian market. They developed the Xbox as an american company for an american market. Just as the do everything else, they design their OS and office software for American markets and then simply put it in another language for another country. Their business practices are very localized. This is very clear when you look at their Japanese and Korean launch. The UK only went smoother because they didn't have to contend with a language problem.

Microsoft is going to have a hard time again in round two unless they begin to understand the Asian market - which they don't yet. They may have something up their sleeve for the Xbox 2 launch, but this generation was all about a successful US launch - Japan and Korea were distant afterthoughts. I mean - you can't look at even the physical design of the xbox and tell me it was designed with the asian market in mind at all. It's very large and heavy and they expect people with limited space to want to put this in their homes? And when they launched in Japan, they designed the s-controller for their 'smaller hands' - that's as customized as they got... it almost borders on insulting too - I don't know whether Americans should be insulted at the implication that their hands are gargantuan or the Japanese should be insulted at the implication that they have tiny hands. Hell, for many games they don't even change the content of the game at all when they localize it for Japan or Korea - they simply print up a different cover and manual.

You could've posted the article for "education", but instead you posted it to kick up dust - evident by the title of your thread and by your comments. I don't really see how this is news to anyone though as this is really no surprise at all. The biggest surprise to me was to see Xbox doing so well in Japan as I didn't expect it to even break 100k units. Xbox will never be #1 in Japan... they have a chance in Korea (which is also a huge but often ignored market), but not in Japan. The only way they could hope to reach Sony in Japan is if they get Square to develop Final Fantasy for them and they also put Namco, Tecmo, Capcom and Konami or whatever other key Japanese developer in their pocket.
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Old 04-18-04, 04:02 PM
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Well, they do have Team Ninja (DOA, Ninja Gaidan, etc.). They have refused to work with PS2 anymore in favor for the Xbox.

As for my original post, the title was appropriate. The Xbox is a failure in Japan. If you read it again, I only restated some interesting facts from the article, and then commented that MS was passing off the blame again. My intention was to discuss that, but as you can see, everyone started defending MS by either claiming that "it sold better than I thought" or "it wasn't supposed to do good in Japan."

If anyone thinks MS wasn't trying to sell millions of units in Japan, they are clearly mistaken. MS isn't in the business to sell underacheiving goods in any market. If they would have known how few consoles would be sold, they would have either not brought the console to Japan, or would have spent much less on advertising. The truth is, they felt it would perform good in a market which thrives on technological innovation, which is why they pumped so much money into advertising. They were wrong, but they won't own up to it (neither will their fans, apparently).

What happened in Japan makes no sence business-wise unless they expected to sell a lot more consoles. You don't spend that much on advertising if you don't plan on recouping it with sales.
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Old 04-18-04, 09:35 PM
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Well, whatever - I'm just telling you what I know and it doesn't really sound like you read the article. How much money did they spend on advertising in Japan? How much on Korea? I'd bet that they spent more money advertising here than in both of those places combined. The article didn't seem to mention it, but you've brought it up several times. The interview states that 400,000 was an acceptable number for a US company... which it is. Especially for a first-time company.

Also - they didn't really support the thing very well in either Japan or Korea - Korea especially. Weeks leading up to the Korean launch and their Korean headquarters didn't have any funds or materials or even a game plan delivered from US headquarters. Japan's story wasn't much different. They knew going in that it was not only going to be a tough nut to crack, but that they weren't going to do well over there. One of their main problems is that they aren't willing to give concessions to key developers and instead opt for the same offer for all developers.

That's why EA was pissed at them and that's why Capcom didn't support them all that much... Sony was willing to offer special incentives to these developers as they always have... that's why their 3rd party support owns all. MS seems to be learning though and it's to be expected that they go through this adolescent phase of learning the business.

I read the article and it was interesting, but nobody in their right mind expected the Xbox to make much of a dent in the asian market in the first place and I think those numbers are quite impressive considering how sloppy and half-assed they approached Japan and Korea.

I mean, you mention advertising like they spent billions of dollars advertising in Japan... well, they didn't - and that's what they have to do. If they were truly serious, they would have to out-spend Sony just to come in second place. Japan is ad-crazy and everywhere you look you see advertisements. You can't escape it. So getting your product well saturated means going all-out on ads. They didn't do that, period.

Now - I'm not saying they were hoping to do poorly. I'm also not saying that they didn't want to do better than they did. I'm just saying that nobody expected the xbox to turn in huge numbers. Also - you have to consider that the Xbox came out something like 2 years after the PS2 did in Japan... not that 2 years would amount to several million more sold or anything.

If you read the article, you'll see that they're basically satisfied with those numbers and that they didn't design the xbox to be Japan friendly - they designed it quickly and that's the size it ended up... No doubt, the second coming of Xbox will have Japan and Korea in mind... but their main focus will always be the North American market. If you even knew the lack of support the Japanese and Korean headquarters get from Redmond, you wouldn't be arguing this.

Hey - I realize Japan is a big market and it's an important market... Microsoft does too. But if you're an american company trying to break into an already saturated Asian market... good friggin luck. I mean, if you know something I don't about all this, then let me in on it... all I know about it really is what my friend tells me of his experiences working for Xbox in Korea.

What happened in Japan is that they already had a product that was doing allright by industry standards in America and they brought it over to Japan and handed over localization and administration duties to people who used to be in charge of their OS and office software products and had never run a game company before.

Sony has headquarters in every country they sell the PS2 in and those headquarters get to make their own local decisions - Microsoft makes all their foreign headquarters decisions go through Redmond which not only slows down the process, but it means that people all the way in Washington State are making decisions about Japanese game markets when almost none of them have spent more than a week or so in that country. Business sense? Well, Microsoft obviously has lots of that, but they don't know how to translate it into Yen or Won yet.

Sure, they have Team Ninja - and without that, I doubt we'd be seeing 400,000 sales... more like 40,000. They need some bigger developers though if they want to make it.
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Old 04-19-04, 12:54 AM
  #34  
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Good Point Trigger, wish they would sell the softwares a bit more cheaper here.
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Old 04-19-04, 08:04 AM
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It has been a little more difficult to find information than I would have thought (especially because MS took the older Xbox press releases out of the archive - why?), but I have managed to find some info.

http://www.activewin.com/awin/commen...ineIndex=21518

Xbox has been in the Korean market for over a year and was targeted to sell 150,000 units during that period. Unfortunately for Microsoft, only 60,000 consoles have been sold to date due to lackluster demand by Korean gamers.
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/news/news_6030528.html

According to the article, the Xbox division staff in Japan, which consists of approximately 200 employees, was called to a meeting at the company's Tokyo office on March 20. The staff was then told by its new division head, Par Singh, that the sales of the Xbox in Japan had been extremely disappointing, and that the company will be forcing early retirement on a number of its workers.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=4631

When the Xbox launched in November 2001, MS forecast as many as 6 million units installed by end June 2002, and parity with the PS2 in 2003. That has not happened.
Microsoft is not happy with the sales in Japan or Korea. The last quote even suggest that they would not be happy with their sales across all markets. I kept finding articles saying how they lowered expectations, but I doubt that would have done much to convince you. MS is putting on a smile through this because that is all they can do. I read the article, and it contradicts what MS is actually doing. They may put on a smile for the press, as to not look bad, but their actions clearly show their disappointment. Lowering expectations and firing employees because of disappointing sales is not something you do when your sales are going your way.
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Old 04-19-04, 08:26 AM
  #36  
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400,000

This is why I find it hard to believe MS is second(or claims to be) in the console market worldwide.
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Old 04-19-04, 08:43 AM
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Well... for one - articles and editorials are just industry outsiders trying to guess what the heads of these companies are thinking. You believe what you want.

Second - I didn't say MS was happy with their sales in Japan nor that they should be. That said - I don't think anything you've linked to shows what "MS is thinking" or proves your case any.
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Old 04-19-04, 09:03 AM
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Let's fighting... Let's fighting love!
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Old 04-19-04, 09:03 AM
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Originally posted by Trigger
Well... for one - articles and editorials are just industry outsiders trying to guess what the heads of these companies are thinking. You believe what you want.
Targets (which are set by the company - estimations are set by industry analyst) and interviews with fired employees satisfies my point. I am not expecting MS to come out and tell us this information on their own.


Second - I didn't say MS was happy with their sales in Japan nor that they should be. That said - I don't think anything you've linked to shows what "MS is thinking" or proves your case any.
Yes you did, "If you read the article, you'll see that they're basically satisfied with those numbers..."
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Old 04-19-04, 09:43 AM
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If you do not know the difference with basically satisfied and happy, I feel sorry for your wife.



And EX-employees are always the most trustworthy, non-biased, non-disgruntled people to give you information about a company.
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Old 04-19-04, 09:56 AM
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Originally posted by Cusm
If you do not know the difference with basically satisfied and happy, I feel sorry for your wife.



And EX-employees are always the most trustworthy, non-biased, non-disgruntled people to give you information about a company.
Take a look in the dictionary. "Satisfy: To gratify the need, desire, or expectation of." Are you suggesting that MS could be happy without gratifying the need, desire, or expectation of Xbox? I feel sorry for your wife if she has to put up with this kind of logic.

And yes, ex-employees are sometimes disgruntled about losing their jobs. You can't assume that every single one, or even that a majority of them, are on a mission to slander the company name.
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Old 04-19-04, 10:29 AM
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Ya this is old news...

Incidentally, NBA is popular in Japan, at least much more popular than the other examples used by Derrich.
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Old 04-19-04, 12:25 PM
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Originally posted by Trigger
MS didn't design the xbox for the asian market. They developed the Xbox as an american company for an american market. Just as the do everything else, they design their OS and office software for American markets and then simply put it in another language for another country. Their business practices are very localized.
Exactly. They couldn't really fail in Japan, because they never really tried there IMO. They, as you said, just put the same thing out their in the local language. Probably just a way to sell a few more systems, and a token effort to get some Japanese developers on board.

If they wanted to succeed, they would have did more marketing there, bought/made exclusive deals with major Japanese devlopers in order to get more Japanese style games there.

But they did no/little of these things. Maybe they'll change next gen, but I doubt it.
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Old 04-19-04, 01:16 PM
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Is this thread still going? The only response it should have received is, "So?"

Seriously... The Xbox is a failure (in Japan). So what?
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Old 04-19-04, 02:22 PM
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Originally posted by mr.snowmizer
The Xbox is a failure (in Japan). So what?
It's more than a "so what" to any gamers that like/prefer Japanese style games, as it's failure there precludes it from getting many good, exclusives from Japanese developers.

As is, the line-up isn't very appealing to those that like Japanese RPGs, platformers, etc.
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Old 04-19-04, 02:27 PM
  #46  
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Originally posted by joshd2012
Take a look in the dictionary. "

Too bad the dictionary does not have "basically satisfied" in it, or you could look that up. I guess I should have put on the for you.
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Old 04-19-04, 08:14 PM
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This thread proves my disbelief(is that a word?) in evolution...Josh2012 was having the same argument when I decided to buy the XBOX in 2001.

He's like Al-Qaida... "down with the Infidel's @ Microsoft! "



-Who Cares
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Old 04-19-04, 08:51 PM
  #48  
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Originally posted by boobietheclown
This thread proves my disbelief(is that a word?) in evolution...Josh2012 was having the same argument when I decided to buy the XBOX in 2001.

He's like Al-Qaida... "down with the Infidel's @ Microsoft! "



-Who Cares
That is interesting since I registered on this site in 2002.

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Old 04-19-04, 09:02 PM
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True.
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Old 04-19-04, 11:59 PM
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MOD EDIT: Your flaming post was removed. Calling people names and or console bashing is not allowed here. -namja
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