The alleged anti-american sentiment in Europe is vastly overstated by the conservative media in the US that can't deal with political criticism. There is the tendency to label dissent as anti-americanism. This is, as far as I am concerned, just a meaningless political epithet employed to exclude your critics from rational discourse. It has quite an McCartian ring to it, too.
The USA as a country is still perceived in a vastly positive light here, even though that light has been somewhat dimmed by some actions of the current US administration which many Europeans find profoundly wrong and in some cases even insolent.
This has absolutely nothing to do with some sort of penis envy, as some people have suggested. If anything, the economic success of the US is admired. Besides, most Europeans are quite content with their lives and content people have little use for jealousy.
I think it would be more appropriate to call it "Anti-BUSHism" and I hope I do not need to stress that a dislike for the current US administrations and some of it's policies does not equal anti-americanism. Most people are very well aware of the fact that Bush was not elected by a popular majority.
This can be clearly be seen when looking at the last two Berlin visits of American presidents. When Clinton visited Berlin back in 1998, at the height of the US economic boom, he was enthusiastically greeted by an crowd of tens of thousands. Bush on the other hand was "greeted" by tens of thousands protestors earlier this year. Anti-Americanism? Jealousy? I think not.
Also, Europeans have shown little, if any, tendency in the past to base their consumer decisions on nationality. To my knowledge, there have been no "Buy European/German/Italian/whatever" campaigns unlike in the US, where the "Buy American" thing pops op every time the US economy is devloping a minor hiccup.
One of the few exceptions is automobiles but that probably stems from the fact that American cars are widely perceived as fuel-guzzling, low-quality pieces of junk which might transform into horrible robots of death and destruction, raping your kitty and eating babies. Asian cars do very well, even though they are suspected to sprout tentacles and molest Catholic schoolgirls. But they probably asked for it anyway.
Anyway, back to the topic. Xbox.
There are probably several reasons the Xbox fails.
One reason is probably anti-MS sentiment. Americans distrust big government while Europeans distrust big business. Europeans are extremely paranoid about their privacy and MS hasn't exactly the best track record in that particular area. Plus, the company is seen as a rather shady monopolist constantly stifling competition. As I said, there is an underlying distrust of big business here and MS is as big a business as it gets. The other thing is that it is kinda hard to sell people a MS box when they already got one at home that crashes every time you look at it crosswise. So basically, MS products aren't exactly popular unless it's an optical mouse.
The most important reason was pricing. Initially, the Xbox retailed at €479 (that's 468$). And to make matters even worse, the MSRP for Xbox games is €69 (= 67.50$). With PS2 games going for €59 and PC games for €45, this probably wasn't the best idea. Of course, a PS2 selling for €299 (IIRC) and a Gamecube for €199 didn't exactly help. I have no fucking clue why they opted not to price the Xbox at PS2 level like they did in the US. Maybe they tried to squeeze out higher margins in Europe to make up for the huge US and Japanese subsidies. Well, guess it has backfired cuz if you want to move hardware in Europe you have to operate at lower margins than in the US.
Next point is advertizing. They simply failed to build a brand recognition. It became painfully obvious that MS has no experience in marketing a console system in Europe. Advertizing is pretty much non-existent apart from some ads in PC gaming magazines and of course you can't attract the PC gamer crowd with prices like €69 per game when they are used to €45 game prices.
And don't even get me started about the Xbox displays in retail stores. Those that haven't been defunct right from the start "showed off" Munch or PGR - Halo was nowhere to be seen. Hell, I bet they could have sold some consoles to the jerk-off gamers like myself if they displayed DOA3 but, alas, no tit advertizing. Damn puritans, no wonder the Aussies are grateful that THEY got the convicts.
Everyone knows you can sell about everything to Germans by slapping a pair of boobs on it. They even sell margarine through tit advertizing, as can be seen here:
http://www.lebenhoch2.de/html/spots/laettah2_big.rm
That MS obviously didn't know it, only adds to the impression of incompetence.
To sum it up:
The Xbox fails because
1. too expensive
2. no tits
3. it's made by MS
So don't get all worked up and paranoid about anti-americanism... that doesn't have anything to do with Xbox doing crappy in Europe.
