How's XB360 gonna sell in Japan?

[Legion]

Virtual girlfriend games. Majong. Virtual kitchen games. Japanese gamers love those silly things.

Lots of things they could do

THe least of which could be to really clean their kitchens, actually play majong and find a real girlfriend and replace those lolicon posters of preteens panty shots with pics of her.

Oh wait, I feel a divine inspiration coming on. Yeah, I can see it now! Kimiga Nozomu SEWING! Do your laundry with the characters from the anime series Bleach! Mario Pocket Change, the game were you-*READ* Yourself-can enjoy countless hours of helping Mario sift through his overalls. Hell yes, menial labor! Thanks JAPAN for helping to turn the mundane into a digital orgasm.

 

[Phil]

Money talks. If Square keeps upping their budgets (reportedly above 30 million dollars for previous FF games) then they won't be able to make a profit on a single platform with only a few million users. Either they delay the next FF game until late 2007 at least, or they'll have to skip on the exclusivity. Sony and MS will certainly have some money to add weight to their words, too, so nothing is decided here yet. But, in the end, money talks, and Square will certainly listen...

Oh I certainly agree with that - the one thing I'm arguing however is that at this point, Xbox doesn't have the userbase that would warrant a Final Fantasy port or multiplatform effort to get them more profits. Porting by itself doesn't ensure "more profits" - the game has to be bought too.

Speaking of which, how well has Crystal Chronicles on GameCube sold? I heard it had a good start in Japan (200'000 sold within the first 2 days), though at least the GameCube had a higher success rate in Japan...

 

[scooby_dooby]

First of all, I meant X360 userbase != XBOX userbase in their buying habits, it will be a variety of old and new xbox consumers. There are enough RPG's coming down the pipes(i've listed them twice) to entice many an RPG gamer.

Secondly, did you not feel like responding to my main point? Many RPG's have already sold extremely well on XBOX. Even if we assume 100% xbox carryover, your pont still doesn't hold water cause KOTOR a new IP sold in the millions, fable as well. This also renders the PC argument meaningless, because regardless of where they "came from" they ARE buying RPG's.

As far as I can tell the base of your point is that teh XBOX360 owners will not buy Final Fantasy, which I think is complete and utter nonsense. It's FINAL FANTASY! Of course it's gonna sell, if it's good it's a gauranteed multi-million seller on any platform. I think it's just your mental stereo type of XBOX gamers as PC-centric, FPS/Race loving gamers that's the problem, it's waaaaay off.

ANd your arguments for PC gamers is extremely weak at best, I'm not disputing the validity of your reasoning, but without any numbers to back up your "theories" we could be talking about 0.1% of the 22million XBOX users, it's nothign but a wild guess on your part. Furthermore, it has very little to do with the X360 since it's a new userbase and will not consist of 100% xbox owners.

4.5-5.5million sold by June. 10million by the end of 06. That's money to be made as far as SE is concerned, and it's not like there weren't at E3 pledging support for the 360.

edit - it does seem to be unconfirmed, it would be nice if 1up would get back to us, 3 days an no info on the "inaccuracy" but apparently there was an interview. This was posted only 3 days ago:

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3145718
UPDATE: We've just confirmed with Square Enix that Wada's comments in the Reuters report are apparently inaccurate. We'll have more on this soon.

 

[pipo]

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1672&Itemid=2

A quarter of Japanese games consumers say they are willing to give Xbox 360 a chance, according to new research. 50% say they will definitely not buy the machine. 30% say they will buy it maybe this year, or maybe next. Lots of stats inside...

 

[Phil]

Secondly, did you not feel like responding to my main point? Many RPG's have already sold extremely well on XBOX. Even if we assume 100% xbox carryover, your pont still doesn't hold water cause KOTOR a new IP sold in the millions, fable as well. This also renders the PC argument meaningless, because regardless of where they "came from" they ARE buying RPG's.

I already have: No doubt the Xbox has western targeted RPGs. Seems to me you don't really know what Japanese turn-based RPGs are like - you being a Xbox owner, I'm really not surprised and this illustrates my point even further. Question: Have you ever played a Final Fantasy game, let alone any of the other Japanese flagship RPGs like i.e. Xenosaga?

If you have, I have no doubt you can think of reasons for yourself what makes those games different from the western aimed ones like Fable and that we are speaking of two different types of RPGs aimed at a very different audience - an audience that yet isn't that apparent on Xbox given that there are none on the system.

4.5-5.5million sold by June. 10million by the end of 06. That's money to be made as far as SE is concerned, and it's not like there weren't at E3 pledging support for the 360.

Wait a minute: 10 million is "money to be made as far as SE is concerned" yet, they have showed absolutely no intention to support the Xbox which has a userbase of over double that? Sure, now they've finally decided to "pledge support" by dishing out a port that can be easily ported from an existing PC port... Sure got to love the support.

Even better: The GameCube which has at least sold a decent amount in Japan and received "Final Fantasy" support isn't receiving more support either. You're grasping at straws.

ANd your arguments for PC gamers is extremely weak at best, I'm not disputing the validity of your reasoning, but without any numbers to back up your "theories" we could be talking about 0.1% of the 22million XBOX users, it's nothign but a wild guess on your part.

Sure it is, but then again 99% of the posts here or on any forum are guesses, estimates and analysis - in addition that your "theory" of final fantasy being a possibility on Xb360 is nothing but a "theory" or "wild guess" on your part too taking official word into account.

And yet, I did go through the effort of explaining my reasoning - one you have failed to counter with any kind of arguments on your part. I'm really not sure what you're trying to achieve here, besides disagreeing with everything you disagree with without offering any counter arguments of your own and wasting bandwidth and my time. If you really have no intentions to add to the points brought forward in a meaningfull way, let it be - because disagreeing just for the sake of disagreeing isn't going to help the discussion nor will it expand it in anyway either. In short: This discussion is going nowhere, which brings me back to the fact, that currently, there's no Final Fantasy confirmed and the closest first hand information outthere suggest that the chance is practically non-existant at this point. I suggest you wait until something changes.

 

[PG2G]

Wait a minute: 10 million is "money to be made as far as SE is concerned" yet, they have showed absolutely no intention to support the Xbox which has a userbase of over double that? Sure, now they've finally decided to "pledge support" by dishing out a port that can be easily ported from an existing PC port... Sure got to love the support.

10 million compared to PS3's user base of...

Things are changing this generation. There WILL be more of a focus on multiplatform developement. These companies need to do all that they can to make a profit, especially when it comes to these big budget games. Porting the game costs next to nothing when put next to the cost of content creation. It only makes sense to use the content you spent so much on wherever it makes financial sense. The Xbox360 userbase may or may not make sense... we'll have to see how things go. Though, I'm pretty sure that even given the demographics of Xbox users, a game like Final Fantasy would see sales of over a million (DQ... probably not).

Besides, get off the "you're only getting a old PC port" bandwagon. Moore already confirmed that there was more Square-Enix support coming and hinted that it may be related to the E3 tech demo. Whether or not all their support will be MMORPG or not is another question though...

 

[scooby_dooby]

I already have: No doubt the Xbox has western targeted RPGs. Seems to me you don't really know what Japanese turn-based RPGs are like - you being a Xbox owner, I'm really not surprised and this illustrates my point even further. Question: Have you ever played a Final Fantasy game, let alone any of the other Japanese flagship RPGs like i.e. Xenosaga?.

Are you kidding me? Lets see FF2, FF3, FF7, FFX.....uh yep I've finished a FF or 2. I owned a PS2 for 2 years you know...

I already explained my take on that. FF has always sold extremely well with western audiences, so even if you attempt to make the argument that "xbox owners only like western rpg's" (which I knew you would, cause it's your last leg to stand on) it falls flat cause FF is a very western-styled RPG that has always sold good over here.

Just give it up, XBOX owner would buy a FF game in droves, it's that simple.

BTW: I find it funny how you want me to counter points when I've already explained why those points are irrelevant, and you skip right over that. Even if we assume everything you say about PC gamers is true for XBOX, that doesn't negate the fact that
A) you have no way to QUANTIFY these PC gamers,
B)The X360 userbase is not the XBOX userbase
C) XBOX owners already showed they like RPG's

Basically your entire argument is your own mental stereo-type that XBOX owners will never buy turn based RPG's, even though there was never a single high quality turn based RPG ever released for XBOX, so how can you make that assumption? It's based on literally NOTHING. KOTOR was pseudo-turnbased anyways.

 

[scooby_dooby]

It's akin to saying the PS2 owners would never buy Halo 3, and stereotyping all 70 million PS2 owners as one type of gamer. Ridiculous.

XBOX has a wide variety of genres, a wide variety of gamers with varying tastes. You need to quit trying to group them into some ridiculous, pre-concieved stereo-type. We're all gamers!

 

[seismologist]

If SE needs more money a PC version would probably come first. They used to do it in the PS1 days, not sure why they stopped (since content creation costs supposedly keep going up.)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If SE needs more money a PC version would probably come first. They used to do it in the PS1 days, not sure why they stopped (since content creation costs supposedly keep going up.)

That's answered from this SQ quote earlier on in this thread...

As for everybody's favorite Final Fantasy, the spokesperson responded, "Our purpose is to develop each new Final Fantasy to reach the limit of available technology, so it will be difficult to think of a multiplatform option.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Oh I certainly agree with that - the one thing I'm arguing however is that at this point, Xbox doesn't have the userbase that would warrant a Final Fantasy port or multiplatform effort to get them more profits. Porting by itself doesn't ensure "more profits" - the game has to be bought too.

The key thing here is what you seem to have missed in my post.
There is a very high possibility that the X360 userbase will be bigger than the PS3 userbase at FFXIII's release date. What's more, it is quite likely that there will be 2 times as many Xs than PSs. It has nothing to do with the size of the original Xbox userbase, as that was always a lot smaller than the PS2 userbase.
You do the math from here.

 

[jvd]

Oh I certainly agree with that - the one thing I'm arguing however is that at this point, Xbox doesn't have the userbase that would warrant a Final Fantasy port or multiplatform effort to get them more profits. Porting by itself doesn't ensure "more profits" - the game has to be bought too.

The xbox didn't .

The xbox 360 will


3 markets from nov 2005 till release date of ff or dragon quest .


What will be the ps3s market ? Perhaps 1 market from march 2006 to release date ? Then two markets from fall 2006 to release date ?

The xbox 360 is going to hae a bigger world wide market than the ps3 for a long time. It will be at least a year till the ps3 catches up and thats if the xbox 360 doesn't keep increasing the % of sales .

Everything i can see points to a spring 2006 japan only ps3 launch and those people in europe and america will be wowed by gears of war pushing more xbox 360 sales .

Not to mention that all the shortages the xbox 360 is experiancing will be gone and instead in sonys court .


So its very arguable that it will be the ps3 that doesn't warrent a final fantasy based on installed base

 

[scooby_dooby]

So its very arguable that it will be the ps3 that doesn't warrent a final fantasy based on installed base

Well I would think that the gaurantee of japanese consumers to buy PS3 would be enough to warrant SE making it for PS3. The largest market for FF is japan(though followed VERY closely by North America) so they can't overlook the largest installed console in their home country.

We'll see. If FF does come out for X360 then that's a huge coup, and sales will definately be much better in japan. If it doesn't, it's not that important. MS has some good RPG's lined up, much more than last time, so as long as they keep pumping those out it shouldn't be too hard to capture some decent marketshare in Japan.

I just take issue with this logic that there's no way SE would ever port to X360. That's ridiculous. There's a very real possibility of it happening, I've thought so ever since I saw Wada come on stage at E3 last year. SE & MS have formed a partnership you can't count anything out.

 

[seismologist]

Is it really a huge coup? It would be if the game weren't also on PS3. Most people dont buy PS3's just for Final Fantasy. Next MS will have to work on getting MGS4 and Gran Turismo.

 

[Jon Brittan]

Next MS will have to work on getting MGS4 and Gran Turismo.

Not necessarily. If they couldn't get MGS4 they could work on getting Splinter Cell as an exclusive, which would somewhat counter that issue.
Gran Turismo? Plenty would argue that a bit of good tweaking to Forza would eliminate that as an issue too...

The biggest issue (in my eyes at least) is changing consumer (especially Japanese specifically) mindset, there are very few games now that aren't multi-platform or don't have equivalents on the other platform. You'd have been better off arguing GTA in all reality.

 

[jvd]

Well I would think that the gaurantee of japanese consumers to buy PS3 would be enough to warrant SE making it for PS3. The largest market for FF is japan(though followed VERY closely by North America) so they can't overlook the largest installed console in their home country.

It all depends .

FF is big enough in japan that if the japanese want the game they will go and buy the system . Then of course the na and europe markets for the xbox 360 will be very big .

If the game is coming out in 2006 / early 2007 then i see it as a bad move for it to come out only on a ps3 .

We'll see. If FF does come out for X360 then that's a huge coup, and sales will definately be much better in japan. If it doesn't, it's not that important. MS has some good RPG's lined up, much more than last time, so as long as they keep pumping those out it shouldn't be too hard to capture some decent marketshare in Japan.

they do but it doesn't matter a game can be really bad but with a big name it can sell very well .

In japan ff on the xbox will sell alot of units . If i were ms i'd be offering everything and the kitchen sink for an announcment and the game from square.

just take issue with this logic that there's no way SE would ever port to X360. That's ridiculous. There's a very real possibility of it happening, I've thought so ever since I saw Wada come on stage at E3 last year. SE & MS have formed a partnership you can't count anything out.

Of course they would port or even go exclusive.

They left nintendo , they can leave sony .

THe saturn was still selling very well in japan untill ff7 was announced for the psone . If things had gone the other way perhaps it would be sega we are talking about now

 

[scooby_dooby]

Is it really a huge coup? It would be if the game weren't also on PS3. Most people dont buy PS3's just for Final Fantasy. Next MS will have to work on getting MGS4 and Gran Turismo.

It really would. You might not buy a system for one signle game, but you do buy it for it's collection of exclusive titles. FF is a huge feather in sony's cap.

 

[Powderkeg]

Next MS will have to work on getting MGS4 and Gran Turismo.

Getting Gran Turismo would be a bit hard since Polyphony Digital is owned by Sony.

The 360 will get Gran Turismo right after the PS3 gets Halo.

 

[scooby_dooby]

And before you could say something liek that, polyphony would have to become independant, THEN we would have to see the CEO of Polyphony go onstage at E3, play a X360 demo, and say they will be working together in the future.

Then, they would be comparable situations

 

[Phil]

Scooby_dooby:

I already explained my take on that. FF has always sold extremely well with western audiences, so even if you attempt to make the argument that "xbox owners only like western rpg's" (which I knew you would, cause it's your last leg to stand on) it falls flat cause FF is a very western-styled RPG that has always sold good over here.

I never stated it hasn't sold well in the west. What I did say however is that it's prime sales are from Japan and as a result, that market is very important to a company like Square-Enix because it is their prime income. But hey, you probably disagree with that too, so this time, here's an extract of what a 2 minute Google search showed up:

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/093/093471p1.html

Square is targeting sales of 3 to 3.5 million copies of FFX in Japan. In America and Europe, the company is expecting to sell, respectively, 1.4 to 1.8 million and 1.2 to 1.5 million copies when the game goes on sale some time in November (it's not that long a wait, when you consider how long we had to wait for Final Fantasy VII on the original PSX). These sales numbers are based on Square's expectation that the PS2 will have sold 6.7 to 6.9 million units in Japan, 6.1 million units in America and 5.5 million units in Europe at the time of the game's release.

Those were Square's targets at a PS2 userbase of 6-7 million units. Note the above that Square expects double sales in its own region.

Here's an another extract indicating Final Fantasy X-2 sales:

http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/rpg/finalfantasyx2/news_6086686.html

Square Enix has today announced that more than a million copies of Final Fantasy X-2 have been sold in North America since it was released in November. Combined with more than 2 million sales in Japan and around 6.6 million worldwide sales of Final Fantasy X, today's announcement brings the total number of units shipped for Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2 to more than 10 million.

It's akin to saying the PS2 owners would never buy Halo 3, and stereotyping all 70 million PS2 owners as one type of gamer. Ridiculous.

The only thing ridiculous about this is you arguing things I've never stated or argued. The PlayStation market share is far more diversified than the Xbox's. Of course Halo would sell.

Just give it up, XBOX owner would buy a FF game in droves, it's that simple.

And again, I disagree. Just take a look at how "well" the Final Fantasy sold on GameCube - a console that has had far more success in Japan and roughly the same userbase size on a worldwide scale. Compared to Final Fantasy X it sold peanuts. You honestly think it would sell more on Xbox? Just look at the Xbox's best sales chart to find first person shooters being at the top (Halo 1, Halo 2) by a large margin, followed by racers? How well did the few RPGs sell on Xbox?

The key thing here is what you seem to have missed in my post.
There is a very high possibility that the X360 userbase will be bigger than the PS3 userbase at FFXIII's release date. What's more, it is quite likely that there will be 2 times as many Xs than PSs. It has nothing to do with the size of the original Xbox userbase, as that was always a lot smaller than the PS2 userbase.
You do the math from here.

I didn't miss it - as I already said perviously - Final Fantasy XII (the PS2 game) hasn't even launched yet - don't expect a next generation Final Fantasy to go on sale before 2007 or even 2008 depening on which region you're looking at. Given that the core-audience of a Final Fantasy game is in Japan, it will go on sale there first. I find it very unrealistic at this point to believe that in this region, Xbox will have anywhere near double as many users as PS3. Last I heard, Sony is still gearing up for a Spring launch in Japan... so that will give PS3 and Xbox roughly the same time on the market (sans those 3-5 months). I'd be VERY surprised if the Xbox360 manages to even keep up with PS3 in Japan. At the time a Final Fantasy XIII does launch, I'd expect sales of PS3 to be at at least 3 times the size of Xbox360s (and that if Xb360 gets off to a good start). But hey, we'll see.