Xbox 360 being phased out by Japanese retailers

Edge has reported today that several major japanese retailers are phasing out Xbox 360 hardware and software as it's not selling as well as they hoped.

Hence, major price drops on games and expect a drop in the number of Japanese publishers releasing for 360.

http://www.next-gen.biz/news/xbox-360-dead-japan

 

Anyone in Japan wanna ship me a cheap 360? There will be a cut in it for you...

 

Define "cheap".

 

Total cost shipped less than $200 USD?

 

200 USD? That's too cheap. Don't forget that the US Dollar is worth nothing these days. 200 dollars only come to just over 15'000 yen. It would cost half of that to post the 360.

Also Japan isn't like the west. You won't be seeing super price cuts like in the west. You will see some savings but nothing major for a while yet.

Yakumo

 

Eh... Japan hasn't been nearly as relevant in the gaming industry the last couple. Not like last generation. All the big releases are from Western developers these days. I don't think the 360 had the same "need" to succeed in Japan like the original Xbox did.

 

The 360 based on the Japan exclusives it has there seems to be the Niche machine of choice

If I'm not mistaken 1 million was around the number the mega drive did in Japan for awhile unless I've been uninformed. I remember reading this in an old magazine I probably don't have anymore.

 

It is true, the focus has shifted to europe and north america. I guess the cost of making games these days threw a lot of japanese developers off. Japanese sales these days are really paltry.

I guess when a game like monster hunter sells well in japan it's probably why people take notice. I wouldn't be surprised if microsoft tries to re-brand the console in that market.

So yakumo you mostly going to stick to getting asian releases?

 

Well most American releases are region free

And I can only hope if this phasing out is true it means cave will make more of their awesome shmups region free.

 

FFXIII is more MMO than RPG as well, nothing killed Final Fantasy for me quicker than adding MMO elements.

 

Unless the game was a Japanese exclusive I always bought new 360 games from Amazon Japan since they sell the Asian versions much cheaper. All my Japanese 360 games that aren't Japan exclusive were bought used. The price of a new 360 game here is always 7000 to 8000 yen. The Asian versions are always under 5000 yen even after shipping most of the time.

Yakumo

 

Lol no. Sorry. Not even by a long shot.

 

Used 360 console only units still cost that much in Japan before shipment? Gee... Kind of shoots down one idea I'd considered. Here I'm fairly sure the barely useful arcade model hit such an MSRP new like two years ago.:-0

 

Is anyone really surprised? The Xbox 360 last week sold a whopping 1,200 consoles, The Playstation 2 which is effectively dead now, sold 1,300. The 3DS has already outsold the total number of Xbox 360s in Japan. The best selling games on the XBox 360 sold barely over 200,000 units (Ace Combat 6, Blue Dragon, Star Ocean 4). Even a Monster Hunter game on the system barely sold 130,000... (The current Monster Hunter game sold well over 300,000 in the first week on the Playstation 3....)

I did ask Cave when I was there why they supported that Xbox 360 and they said that Microsoft do give them a fantastic deal, so they genereally earn more money then if they released the game on Nintendo or Sony playforms. They also generally estimate that they will only sell around 40,000 units of any game in Japan, they stated that Deathsmiles although sold twice as much as it did in Japan for the European and American release, did not earn them nearly as much and hence the DLC path they took in the west for DS2.

It is going to be interesting to see what effort Microsoft put on the Xbox 360 in Japan now and if they will still get developers to write for the system or if they will move to other platforms.

Going on "All the big releases are from Western developers these days" this is true as long as your not Nintendo, with the Wii having a total of 4 non Nintendo Wii games in the Top 20 selling games to date, all of these are Third Party and 3 are European (Two of those are Dance games and one a Lego Star Wars game....), 1 American (a Guitar Hero game if you are interested...)...

On the Xbox 360, you have to go down to 29th best selling game, which is a Resident Evil game and the Playstation 3 has 4 games that are Japanese developed in the Top 20 best selling games to date. Although in fact if you ignore Kinect Adventures (as it is a pack in game) then the entire Top 10 best selling games Xbox 360 games are generally violent FPSes, well done America... :banghead:

Still $200 for a Japanese Xbox 360 delivered was funny, given the $ being worth 77 yen at time of writing, even just sending the machine alone (via EMS, SAL is not much cheaper....) would cost $105, leaving 7300 yen to buy an Xbox 360, which is not going to happen. Even sending it via Surface mail (which would cost $52) would still only leave 11500 to get a machine, but you are only likely to get an early generation Xbox 360 for that price.

 

Except for a few sales spikes (Ace Combat, Idolmaster) has the 360 been alive in Japan in the first place? Everyone was always talking about how badly the original Xbox did in Japan, but for the most part the 360 has been selling even worse.

 

if MS got japanese dev's onboard for the original xbox they would have thrashed Sony.

 

Only good Japanese Xbox 360 releases are the Shoot-em-ups that have been exclusive over there. Other than that its been a long time coming.

 

So what's Virutal on Force chop liver?

 

To be fair I would have counted Virtual On as a form of Shooter

 

Nah, not a cat in hells chance. SONY were way too dominant for any developer to take a chance on buying expensive tools and setting up dev studios on an unknown quantity when the market leader had such a massive installed user base already.

American hardware has never fared well in the East and that leads to developer apathy and caution because if a console is not going to sell well then neither are the games regardless of how good they are. Add in the extra headache of Japanese code shops having to set aside talent to make domestic only games that will sell only a handful of copies and won't or can't be translated or localized abroad because the average Western gamer doesn't ''get'' Japanese style games then you have to question why Microsoft even bothered in the first place.