Has M$ finally relized Japan doesnt care?

Take a look at Microsoft Japan Release Calendar, and you’ll find an empty hole. Two titles are listed. That’s all folks.

Swing by the US site, and you’re swimming in titles. They’ve got Fight Night: Round 3, Full Auto, College Hoops: 2K6, Ghost Recon, Frame City Killer, Top Sin 2, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Outfit. Wait, there’s more. The announced titles are Dead Rising, Demonik, Final Fantasy XI, Gears of War, Prey, Saint’s Row, Test Drive Unlimited, The Darkness, Tomb Raider: Legend, and Too Human.

Game Watch Impress announced Final Fantasy Online for the 360 today, Mizuguchi and Sakamoto have new titles somewhere on the horizon, but that’s about it.


Personaly M$ should have a Sony sticker somewhere on the 360, might sell more consoles

Kotaku

 

This is hilarious.

:dance:

 

Even if it is a marathon, with a start like this it is going to be hard.

My experience on the 360 has been kinda weird, I seem to have missed out on all the shortages etc, maybe that would have given it a sense of gravitas - I don't know. I just remain profoundly unexcited by the whole thing.

I like it - just not very much. The wireless controllers are quite nice and the games I have played so far are good - they just haven't done anything for me on a deeper level. The machine itself echoes this feeling - not bad, but kinda dull and nothing special.

The fact that it looks like I am going to be playing (or not) RR6, DOA4 and EM( (when it comes) for the next couple of months, doesn't exactly fill me with excitement. If N3 is delayed even more, then you have a machine that is not going to be touched for a good while.

Going on what some of my gaming friends in japan have to say - I would put it down to a really weak brand and image that xbox has. There is quite simply not enough that people want and the news above will not help, MS should be sticking every game that may be released on the coming soon section on the list.

When one of my japanese friends brought a 360 - he got it for DO4, but doa has very limited otaku appeal. It does not sell in a wider context. It has been said a hundred times before - but it is all about the rpg. MS is sitting on some big ones, there should be new screenshots released every other day. But remember the original xbox had magatama - that was supposed to be a japanese rpg for the masses. You need quantity of games or a gimmick that grabs the mainstream.

MS is simply not trying hard enough, all that crap about getting japanese developers onboard is all showboating for western PR. They want to look a success in the west, note most of the japanese made games are actually ones whose main appeal will be for the west (and only the hardcore in japan). They should be pouring money into expanding the japanese market, it reeks of arrogance that they can perhaps change japanese tastes by slinging western games at them until they have to admit that they are actually quite good.

I have a friend who has a ps2 just to play pachinko/slot games and rpgs. If you are not releasing one pachinko game a month - he is not going to buy your console. I know someone else who is a pure arcade man, another a ADV guy. To become mainstream in japan you need a good vein of Japanese rpgs surrounded by vast amounts of niche titles.

In short - without a good variety of games coming out = 360s are going to be staying on the shelf a long time.

 

They should have teamed up with Sega to handle the 360 in Japan.

 

Well, considering that Japan is the country that makes games taiko drum master, kingdom hearts 2, and those DS brain training games best sellers, I can't really say I'm surprised.

 

What they need is more kiddie pr0n.

Not jokin there, have you ever seen a hentai game? some girls are like 12 or less...

 

The hell does that have to do with anything?

 

He means if Microsoft sold more Hentai on the Xbox (or Xbox 360) in Japan, they would sell more.

 

All right - for starters the only games that get released on consoles these days are renai or love simulator games. They have all the sex scenes taken out. If you have played any you will have noticed that there is almost nothing vaguelly pornographic at all.

So lets take balder force exe on the ps2, every time you would normally hit a sex scene in the game, the screen just fades out and you resume the game afterwards. To recap - they have to cut out the sex scenes for the console version.

Therefore you will never see a "Hentai" game on 360/PS2/GC. You will see love simulators and there is a massive difference.

Whilst I'm on this subject, those hard loli-con games are of a very limited market. They do not shift many units although there is a hardcore of people who always buy them. The most popular hentai or love games are nearly always those set around the years of 18/19, due to the people who actually play them. So please do not say all Hentai games are loli-con games. It is simply not true.

For the record the xbox has a couple of good ADV games, they did not help at all!

(seeing as they are releasing lots of hentai games for dvd players now - I don't think they would stick them on the 360, a tad pointless)

 

I was making fun of the subject man, no need to take it seriously.

I think the problem with Xbox in japan cant be compressed to just one but an array of issues.

First theres the size, then the fact that M$ isnt that popular in japan; theres the impression that M$ doesnt take the local market seriously (I was making a joke, but they payed a lot to have the DOA girls bouncing their boobs all the time) I say the fact that xbox is the only "foreign" console does matter.

I say M$ should (at the time) buy SNK before playmore did.

 

where to start..........

360 was dead in the water before it went to Japan, there is no game to cater to .jp market at all. M$ figured if they wow them, with sand prints on the beach and 360 lounge that people would sink there teeth into the system. As we can clearly see each day, 360 is just meant for Americans, for whatever reason eye candy have taken over and, game-play and depth in a game is no longer needed. Well in Japan it is clearly different, games with replay value, and solid game play sells, this is a fact look at there sales charts, even the most simplest looking game will do well if it have depth to back it up.



Look at the launch line up for 360, sports, racing, FPS (Japan), not really anything there to cater to the Japanese market at all. Plus Peter Moore is deaths omen, and I wouldn't be surprised if the plug will be pulled from Japan as soon as Revolution and PS3 launches.

 

I see. By that logic then the Dreamcast should have been far more successful than the PS2 since compared to the PS2 it had simpler looking games with (arguably) more depth and different gameplay mechanics.

 

You know, saying that the japanese taste for games is superior to those of the western world is a pretty nasty stereotype.

After all, is them who start yelling every time a new FF game is released (like those are SOOO innovative) and let's not talk about date sims...

 

Correct me if im wrong, but Saturn and Dreamcast did hold there own in Japan very well before the plug was pulled from Sega

Please re-read what I posted, as I was comparing sales charts.

 

Depends on what your definition of 'held their own' is. They fared better than in the US market perhaps, but they never reached the level of success that consoles from $ony managed.

 

People are using the dollar sign to replace the letter S in the names Sony and Microsoft (or the abbrevation 'MS')!

It's cute! Not to mention oh-so-clever!

Warakia makes a very good point here. It's fairly typical of western gamers to automatically assume "lol Japanese love cartoon and kiddie porn orz!" without really knowing what they're talking about. The market for 18+ games in Japan is only a fraction of the gaming scene, with most of the games being endowed with the sort of sexual antics one would expect from a fairly risque R-rated movie. The games a friend may have told you about where a tentacle monster rapes an entire orphanage of 13-year-olds before devouring Tokyo comprise a very tiny fraction of the already-small genre.

The idea that visual novel-type games sell systems in Japan is a good one, but there's a little more to it than that.
The primary platform for the genre is and has always been the PC (or PC-88 before it). The majority of games that appear on home consoles (excepting some series like Tokimeki Memorial or Sakura Taisen) are actually ports of a previous PC release. People complain about Nintendo constantly redesigning its handhelds in an effort to presumably milk the most cash from consumers, but this is nothing compared to visual novel publishers in Japan. Typically, a title is released on the PC with all the merchandise related to such an event. If the game does well enough, it's often ported to consoles with any naughty bits cleaned up to conform to CERO rating standards. The console ports will often include added characters, scenarios, or the like, and fans of the original PC release will more often than not go grumbling to Softmap to pick up the latest console port just for the new additions. With some of the larger companies, the console version is then repackaged for another PC release, often with a few additions over the console release. It's profit whoring at its very best.

The point that I was trying to make with that longwinded explanation is that console ports of 'datesim' games really appeal to a very small gaming demographic and as such aren't very good for contributing to overall system sales.

 

What game are we talking about here? Sounds pretty cool.

So what, if any, western games become hits in Japan?

 

Although i don't agree with him, he's not 100% wrong either. 50 Cent Bulleproof, True Crime, 25 To Life,... All crap. But they probably sold a lot, because are "gangsta". I know Japan also have shitty games, but the difference is that there they probably won't sell better than good games.

Explain to me how great games like Indigo Prophecy, Psychonauts, Ape Escape 2 / 3, R-Type Final, sell small quantities in america, and all those crap game sell tons of copies?

 

It's just marketing. Not that i agree with it.

Not to mention the fact that none of those games hae dropped to a "budget" price yet (aside from the ape escape, i'm not sure what they would retail for). If you were to walk into a gamestop right now, R-Type Final would run you about $30 used, psychonauts would be $40 used. The only reason i bought R-type is because it's getting harder to find, otherwise i would just wait for a price drop. I've wanted to buy psychonauts since it was still being published by Microsoft, but haven't yet because it's too expensive for a single player game. If either game dropped to $20, they would sell out. It's the visious cycle of video games, weird titles don't sell well, so they aren't marketed, so they don't sell well... ad naseaum...

 

DUDE! I already said that that was a joke! I know H-games are barely the 10% of the market or even less!

Exactly, because they are gangsta...

Is easier to sell a idiot-redneck like 50cent (yeah, you can be black and a redneck) that only talks about killing hommies, punching white guys and denigrating women.

People just love the idea of being able to do whatever the fuck they want...