Japan Gaming Guide

Everyone knows the 360 hasn’t made much of an impact in Japan. While the Wii and DS continue to fly off the shelves, 360 sales continue to disappoint. Why is this? What do Japanese gamers think of the 360? The latest Famitsu magazine carries a large feature on the console, with a run-down of the major titles, and endorsements from a selection of celebrities. The consensus seems to be that the 360 is very good, but people just don’t know enough about it. Here’s what they had to say:

Comedian Yoshiyuki Hiraii compares Xbox 360 to American cars – a mixture of European and Asian tastes. He enjoys the fact that you can see what your friends are doing. He currently spends his evenings playing Rainbow 6 Vegas with his wife – they apparently enjoy listening to each others machine gun fire over voice chat. He really likes the hardware. Hooray 360!

TV celebrity Yamamoto Mona is a Blue Dragon fan. She likes the lack of stress in modern RPGs, and believes that the 360 has many games like this – something we’re not 100% sure we agree with.

The Xbox 360 is wonderful, according to pro wrestler Kiku Taro. The online connectivity means you can expand your world, and the large number of online users is a big plus. He enjoys the voice chat and the many interesting games on the system. He likes to wind down after a hard days wrestling with multiplayer Ghost Recon.

Import shop owner Teruki Tsuchiya enjoys a bit of zombie carnage – the Dead Rising video trailer was a big hit with his customers. He enjoys playing the kind of high quality online games that used to be the sole preserve of the PC.

It seems no-one who’s actually tried the 360 has a bad word to say about it, so how come the sales figures are so bad? It’s notable that Famitsu only interviewed the machines converts – we’d like to hear from the people that aren’t buying it – they seem to be in the majority after all. Still, interest in the machine does seem to be slowly increasing, but given the effort Microsoft has already put into promotion and marketing we’d have to question whether it will ever be able to compete with Sony and Nintendo. Perhaps the fundamental issue is one that Famitsu doesn’t mention – the willingness of the Japanese to purchase an American product, when there are two Japanese alternatives on the shelves.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.