"Lost Odyssey" a catalyst to sell millions in Japan & tens of millions in Europe?

Buy me a 360, and some games too, and i'll do more than touchng

 

If the game is half as good as the early impressions are I will be very happy. I hope MS has the IP or exclusive to the sequels and spin offs. I just hope the game is old school RPG hard like the early FF,DQ and phantasy star games.

 

Unless i'm terrible mistake Graw, oblivion and Cod2 were all million sellers globally speaking.

 

Absolutely. It is much much much harder to attract new customers than keeping the current ones. That's why MS has had such a hard time in Japan and probably will for years.

MS Marketing need to really pull off one hell of a job, and it's not just about price, or just about advertising, it's a whole group of factors (the marketing mix, if anyone studied marketing) that influence how a product sells.

At the end of the day, the Xbox project was aimed at a certain target audience from day one. That audience did NOT include Japanese gamers as a first priority and for that, MS will always have a hard time there. I'm not blaming MS, at the end of the day their marketing team did a good job, everything considered. It is obvious that you cannot please everyone and that you cannot sell your product to everyone. That would require a product with everything inside, which can be very expensive and has its own set of problems (cough*cough). So you need to know beforehand who you are selling to.
When selling a product these days you need to use certain "marketing techniques" which maximise your profit potential.
That includes dividing the market into smaller parts, each with their own qualities (ie. the 12-16 year olds, males or females, 35 and up, rich people, poor people, Asian or American etc.) and then picking out the segments that you think will actually buy your product. Then you need to make sure that you can persuade your customers that your product is different enough from the competition that is actually worth buying.

It's a mix of factors, it's about pricing, product, promotion (advertising) and place (or distribution - geographical factors which can affect sales). Not just one.

Marketing is a tough cookie, and if most people think that Marketing is just "advertising", then you should know that it drives most of today's businesses and delves in much much deeper than that. Advertising is just a tiny fraction of what Marketing is.


PS: Sorry about the marketing lesson, i just though i'd shed some light to some people...

 

great marketing for a medium product (talking about games that interest japan people) will only get you medium (and short-lived) results at best.
medium marketing for a great product will probably yield better results.

however, it is only logical to understand that m$ has planned a marketing mix for japan.
its just that the right games where not ready beforehand. (maybe they will never exist, but in this convertation we are taking blue dragon, lost odyssey, infinite undiscovery and some others as de facto the right products)

I would imagine that the japanese audience already has knowledge that "there exists a console named 360 and blah blah."
IIRC most succesfull titles on big import chains in japan are oblivion and dead rising.
(dont be surprised when dead rising japan version wont sell well. it has no gore, so 360 owners from japan (yes, there are some thousands even now ) prefer the other locale versions)
hell, those two import titles may have sold more than every officially released game over there.


so the marketing mix is missing the correct games in my opinion, and not the advertising exposure.
if the games deliver as expected, everything marketing-wise will be much easier than current state.
if the games do not deliver, you could have the most expensive advertising campaign in history and only reach those that are affected by nice ads. and quickly dissapoint them, too.

games are not primarily enjoyed by their ads. they are enjoyed by gameplay and experience. that is the key part in the marketing mix imo, and either m$ succeeds to reach that goal soon, or its finito la musica, pasato la fiesta. 8)

 

You're still confusing "marketing" with "advertising"... But it's fine

Of course MS has a strategy for Japan, or they wouldn't sell their product to distributors anything there at all.
It's just that it's obvious that their first priority seems to be the American audience.

Mind you, it's all getting better. And maybe with time things will really change, but by that time PS3 will have a FF and a MGS under the belt, among other games that Japanese gamers will want till they die.

As i said, of course advertising won't change much, one other problem marketers have to think about is to avoid spending money and resources to promote a product to people who won't actually buy it, or develop features that the consumer don't want. That would just be a waste of resources, as you'd spend money to develop and advertise something that is just bound not to sell. That is dependant on many factors.

Japanese gamers know very well that the 360 exists, they just don't want one, mainly because they can't relate to the library of games available for it.

At the same time, pricing problems: the 360 is already rather cheap for what it is and it's obvious that further price drops won't really help the situation much. Japanese gamers, in general, aren't buying 360's not because it's too expensive, but because they can't play their usual japanese games on it. Very simple.

MS knew from the beginning that Japan would have been hard work to break, so they really tried to maximise their sales in America and Europe. That is reflected in the library of games for the Xbox and X360 so far.

But as i said, things should change for the better. For all it's worth, Lost Odyssey certainly won't be the game that will start selling millions of X360's in Japan. One game doesn't do that, MS needs loads of Lost Odyssey's (if it ends up being as good as expected).

Heck, Final Fantasy wasn't the game that sold the most PS2's in Japan. It certainly helped, but it was the whole plethora of great Japanese games available on the PS2 that made is as successful as it was.

 

eventhough I am not a marketeer, I have studied my share of marketing when I was back in college.
I am very aware of the 4P's, and I already stated than in my opinion it is the first P (product) that needs refinement for the japan market. i.e. games.
the other P's are easier to handle, and for a corporation like m$ are not even worth talking about as possible problems.

as you know good games are not made in a day, and even more so, great games take more time and resources to make.
we have known for quite a while that m$ is "cooking" in japan, so maybe in a few days at Tokyo we'll get a chance to taste what they've been preparing.

I dont believe that you are correct when saying that "but by that time PS3 will have a FF and a MGS under the belt"
as far as we know, the time for Blue Dragon is this year, holidays 2006, and Lost Odyssey is first quarter 2007.
FF on PS3 in my opinion wont hit the market until 2008.

so that leaves plenty of time for m$ in japan to make something.
what will they make out of it, I dont know. nobody knows yet.
but we will find out, wont we?

 

For the 10th time, by the time LO releases there will be a stack of high quality japanese titles, so this whole 'one title' thing is bogus.

The 360 will have a fairly strong library when LO releases, including stuff like BD, Lost Planet, Dead Rising, 3 or 4 other JRPG's and a variety of other games I don't feel like looking up. LO has the potential to act as a catalyst IMO, it's not as if it's one game in a sea of nothing.

But as I said, I think shelf space and demo pods in stores is absolutely essential. If the 360 games are relegated to a tiny shelf in the corner in most stores, the Japanese will never get a feel for size of the game library.

 

Heh, then i'm defensive??

I never said that LO will be the ONLY good game on X360. I merely said that it alone won't save the 360 from Japanese apathy. Statement of fact really, and never did i even hint that 360 will fail because LO will be alone. I simply said that it's a group of excellent games that make a console successful. End of.

 

lol, I can't point out any flaws in your reasoning without me being defensive?

You're consistently making erronous statements and then trying to redefine what you said after the fact. Fact is LO will not be the 'only' good japanese game, so therefore it does not need to move systems by itself.

The statement "it alone won't save the 360 from Japanese apathy" is not relevant and completely pointless, it would be common sense if it were actually the case, but it's not. Lost Odysey doesn't have to sell the system "on it's own" the system will have quite a few strong titles by that point(assuming the titles in development turn out well).

But I guess that's just me being defensive, it couldn't possibly because your analysis of the situation is flawed

For the record: I'm not really expecting LO to move huge units, not due to lack of other quality software but because of the japanese aversion to the xbox brand.

 

I wonder what's happening at Team Ninja these days...
Any word on Ninja Gaiden 2 or Next DoA, they must also be working on something else than that volleyball game?
I want Ninja Gaiden 2!!

 

What analysis?? The only real analysis i gave was about the market as a whole and it's not wrong because it was in general terms. Obviously you skipped that and went straight to the one sentence in the whole post about MS you didn't like and decided the whole post was "wrong" because of it.. Get over yourself and learn how to read, I'm out of here, last time i actually make an effort.

 

I was at two different best buys yesterday (american big box electronics store) and was looking at flat screens. I settled on the Samsung LN S4695D eventually its a 1080P LCD Monitor... anyway the sales guys in both stores were like I cant wait to get my PS3 and play 1080P games on it.

I was like "yeah man... how much is the set?"

So the anticipation of the Playstation brand is universal... and even a lil bit oftputting...

BTW trying to watch Blu ray on the Samsung unit was horrid... the thing is SLOW as molasses!

 

This discussion is about mass-market appeal in Japan, not about having 'high quality' titles because xbox had enough of those and we all know how that turned out.

Imo people are overestimating LO as a 'systemseller'. Japan is a hard nut, popular Japanese franchises like RR and DOA proved that. It'll probably be one of the best selling xbox360 games in Japan but it definitely won't sell millions.

 

No, the rest of your post I agreed with which is why I didn't address it.

This paragraph specifically I feel is completely misrepresenting the siutation:

I'm simply pointing out that LO has the potential to act as a catalyst because there will already be a strong library of available games. It is not simply 'one' game. Is that really so hard to understand?

Of course instead of responding to my point, and giving a counter argument, all you've done is make this personal once again, and accuse me of being defensive. Yes, I gave you 1 neg rep like a month ago and called you defensive, get over it buddy.

 

What high quality japanese titles did XBOX have other than Team Ninja games? It had zero JRPG's for starters. Regardless, I'm not arguing this will sell 360's, just correcting LB's misrepresentation of the game library when LO does launch.

 

I never deined that LO has the potential to sell systems, and i never denied the fact that 360 will get a better library. Is that really so hard to understand?

For the sake of argument, let me "analyse" my sentence and show what my point was, which after two utterly amazing posts should have been clear anyway to anyone with half a brain:

But as i said, things should change for the better = X360's library will get better.

For all it's worth, Lost Odyssey certainly won't be the game that will start selling millions of X360's in Japan. = LO will sell systems, but not millions.

One game doesn't do that, MS needs loads of Lost Odyssey's (if it ends up being as good as expected). = Simple statement of fact. MS needs lots of good games which will appeal to Japanese gamers. No comment whatsoever about whether i think MS will or will not get them. Simple statemet: MS needs lots of good games. IF you say they will get them, then good! But i never implied they won't.

And i just gave u bad rep now for, once again, misrepresenting my point and completely and utterly overreact. YOu keep doing it and especially to me for some strange reason. Some people here need to change their posting methods and it certainly ain't me, i've proved it with my posts on this thread and thousands other threads.

You're on my ignore list.

 

You say I don't even have "half a brain" and the accuse me of overreacting? Priceless.

Get your fuckin panties out of a bunch and relax, I never argued with your statement it would not sell millions of consoles, just that it is not "one game" can you get that through your skull?

You can't even take part in a simple discussion without going off the deepend, calling people stupid, and then sulking and putting me on your ignore list? You need to grow up and quit being such a damn drama queen.

 

The "discussion" was going very well before you came in.

Very normal posts, actually i'd call them very good posts, to which you replied:

and ultimately...

If i'm the only one who thinks you overreacted, then i'll say sorry.

But as you say... priceless: The drama queen in the building is, amazingly, really not the gay guy!

 

I've seen a video-review recently (it was on hawai I think), where the man talked about various things, mainly about DOAX2 (and showed very pretty videos).
later on he talked about consoles, stating that ps3 is not hard to program for, but he is already getting results by working on 360, and finally he said: "Ninja Gaiden 2 is coming along very nice, as soon as we are done with DOAX2, we are going to focus full force on NG2."

now where was that link.... aahh!! here it is
enjoy