Xbox's future in Japan

[patsu]

I don't know if any of the points you mentioned shows that Sony intentionally treat their EU customers poorly though. It doesn't make sense.

Price is a function of value and cost. With an extensive channel, they could have higher cost to upkeep their channel despite the larger economy of scale. The Yen has been giving Japanese companies a hard time too.

Microsoft has been focusing on English and perhaps Spanish speaking countries for efficiency (e.g., slashing UK price). Sony seem to have a bigger area to cover. Their definitions of EU region may be different in the first place. The reason Sony gave for slowness in EU is usually logistics, extra development needs, and demand. Some titles are not carried in US, EU or even Japan for similar reasons.

As for available services in EU, there are many localized services on PSN in EU. Many of which I have not heard of. I think there is a list on wiki somewhere. They look like local/regional service providers. They are not provided by Sony per se. They are local partners who cater to the locals' needs (e.g., larger local selection, language).

I think Sony is also interested in cultivating local content since they are a large publisher. So they work with indigenous developers in India, Singapore, Japan and I'm sure EU countries to grow a more diverse developer base to target regional markets. I believe tech companies like Apple and Microsoft usually take a blanket approach, like offering low cost/zero developer royalties to grow.

Doubt any of the large vendors hate EU.

 

[ct03]

I don't really see how Microsoft can "ignore" Japan, the notion is absurd.

360 sold 1.5 million in Japan (2.7% of its worldwide sales). I think it would be doing just fine even without those 1.5 million.

 

[TheChefO]

360 sold 1.5 million in Japan (2.7% of its worldwide sales). I think it would be doing just fine even without those 1.5 million.

Indeed.

In fact, factoring in costs to deploy in the region, marketing, exclusive developer deals, and distribution channels, I'm quite sure MS is in the red in Japan.

They were successful in getting Japanese developers on board, but that group is largely a footnote at this point.

Japanese developers have to develop for MS if they want to sell to a large part of the market (roughly half of the HD consoles if we are to believe Sony's sales figures).

If I were in MS' shoes, I'd leave the console out of mainland Japan (of course they could always import) *UNLESS* they get a sweetheart deal from a big Japanese Electronics Company to help build/design/market/brand the console worldwide which would also help them in Asian countries.

Aside from this avenue, they have little to gain and much to loose by trying to focus on Japan, AGAIN.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Despite whatever you say about Japan, in terms of dollars spent on the gaming industry (whether it's the publisher side or gamer side of it ), the only country bigger is the US. I don't really see how Microsoft can "ignore" Japan, the notion is absurd.

What an absurd statement!!

Of course they can. All you need is ROI. Ms shareholders ultimately care about cashflow, not if you own the Jpn market. Only console fanboys care about this.
Current financials suggest you can get more than enough of that through eu and us markets, particularly if you use pc based hardware to have low production costs! ( and also avoid another rrod embarrassment)

Also, IT'S MORE IMPORTANT FOR JPN DEVS TO SELL IN THE US & EU MARKET than it is for ms to sell in Jpn!!!!!!

Please take into consideration that every dime spend on Jpn is money that could be used to secure the us and eu market. Furthermore eu and us tastes seem quite alined, so you get more bang for the buck in the west!

There is no point in trying to design for Japan, especially if it can potentially hurt the us/eu market!


It's not like ms hasn't tried to win over Japan. They have spent extreme amounts there with no luck. They have bought exclusives from Japanese devs with good reputation. They failed. What's worse is that all these Jpn games utterly fail in the Western markets, so the money drain is even worse!

In addition, Sony hasn't delivered on great Jpn numbers either, What makes you think that ms will do better on their third attempt?


IMO, doing your own thing and trying to make the best posssible gaming experience is a much better way to approach the situation, rather than having Americans trying to guess what Japan wants, and ending up with something that isn't what it could be in the west.

If the product is good enough, Jpn people will buy it. Same goes for any product.

 

[mrcorbo]

Indeed.

In fact, factoring in costs to deploy in the region, marketing, exclusive developer deals, and distribution channels, I'm quite sure MS is in the red in Japan.

They were successful in getting Japanese developers on board, but that group is largely a footnote at this point.

Japanese developers have to develop for MS if they want to sell to a large part of the market (roughly half of the HD consoles if we are to believe Sony's sales figures).

If I were in MS' shoes, I'd leave the console out of mainland Japan (of course they could always import) *UNLESS* they get a sweetheart deal from a big Japanese Electronics Company to help build/design/market/brand the console worldwide which would also help them in Asian countries.

Aside from this avenue, they have little to gain and much to loose by trying to focus on Japan, AGAIN.

Also, production capacity allocated to making 360 units for the Japanese market hurt launch and post-launch availability in the markets where the console actually had a chance of selling. I forget the exact numbers, but I remember that Japan was still trying to sell through it's initial launch allocation for an absurd amount of time.

 

[KongRudi]

Microsoft needs developer-studios in Japan wich cater to the asian market with software, if they want to be sucesfull there. :-/

Both Nintendo and Sony have set up their own studios in Asia, wich we know cater to that market.
No, point for a asian consumer to buy a console with nothing exclusive software for you, except only two or three games in the consoles lifespan, when the other competitors gives you ten to twenty times as much exclusive games catered towards you. :-/

If MS wants to succeed as a brand there, they need to set up shop in order to match the local competition.

MS set up two studio to help japaneese devs, but not produce any new IP for themselves, and they got some return for that, until they sold them off.
So clearly what they need to do, is to make new studios wich cater to consumers, not just devs.
And maybe then the consumers will be happy aswell.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why don't MS just buy Japanesse content from 3rd parties? Why would they have to own studios outright to be a success?

 

[TheChefO]

Why don't MS just buy Japanesse content from 3rd parties? Why would they have to own studios outright to be a success?

Why bother?

Japanese sales trends for consoles are already poor. Buy exclusive rights for content just to hold some pseudo trophy for the first American company to do "well" there (let's have no illusions of grandeur here, they can do nothing to truly unseat Nintendo/Sony in Japan)?

Bottom line, MS is in this to make money. If they want Japan, it has to make sense to the bottom line.

I'd see MS teaming up with a big hardware player in the region to help design and manufacture the nextgen hardware which would help them everywhere (RRoD) and might be acceptable enough to Japanese with a bit of marketing and co-branding that it turns into a win/win.

But there is absolutely no reason to go after Japan with the xb720 other than bragging rights at this point, given the sales trends of consoles in the region and further leaning to ever more mobile tastes of the culture there.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why bother?

I'm not saying they should. I was just querying KongRudi's idea that MS need to own Japanese studios if it's the Japanese games that'd win that market (which it possibly isn't).

 

[egoless]

Delete

 

[Alucardx23]

Mi opinion is that Microsoft would have done a lot better just releasing the XBOX 360 in Japan as a Sega branded console, Sega is a more recognized/loved brand over there and has a lot more experience on how to sell a console in Japan.

 

[TheChefO]

I could have sworn on the original 20GB HDD, there was a welcome video that explicitly pointed out they already did that ...

I'm pretty sure they had assistance/guidance from the Japanese for the aesthetic, but not the engineering.

What I'm suggesting would be the total package. Bring in a Panasonic, Toshiba, Samsung (or even a Sony ) and have them design the console hardware inside and out. Then when it is ready for launch, brand it with x company logo in Japan (assuming an agreeable contract could be reached for co-branding worldwide, it could help in other regions as well).

This should allow the Japanese to accept the "foreign" hardware and should help MS in making sure the design will not cost them $1B in defective returns.

win/win

 

[Cheezdoodles]

No point in that. Only reason for rrod was because ms wanted to launch in xmas. Things got rushed without proper testing.

Using Jpn engineers for the hardware would not change anything, Outside of getting a much weaker gpu and a pointlessly strong CPU.

Regarding bang for the buck, xbox360 was better designed. Easier to develop, much cheaper to produce, and graphically more or less on par (at least from casual eyes) .

It's not like Japanese products don't crap up also and are perfect...

 

[Ghostz]

Using Jpn engineers for the hardware would not change anything, Outside of getting a much weaker gpu and a pointlessly strong CPU.
.

That makes no sense....

Japanese engineers didn't design the cpu or gpu in the Ps3. In fact, there's nobody in Japan that designs high end GPUs or CPUs. That's why you see so many Japanese developers struggling with their production model because such R&D doesn't exists there.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Toshiba designed PS2's Reality Synthesiser. Cell was a co-design between Toshiba and IBM with Sony. Cheezdoodle's tongue-ni-cheek point is Japanese desigined hardware would be esoteric and awkward. In reality, every system design now can be handled by any tech company with a little sense. You buy a CPU from ARM, IBM or AMD/Intel, and a GPU from AMD, nVidia (if you want to waste money, going by other console contracts) or one of the mobile IHVs. Stick 'em together with other standard components and you have a box that can run software. The hard part is more getting a cost effective design, although as everything's mix-n-match these days I don't feel that's such a big issue, and getting development tools to actually use the stuff. In the case of mobile devices, all these Japanese companies can piece together a tablet or handset, but it takes someone else to create a software platform (Google, MS). There's nothing really a Japanese company could do designing a console for Japan that no-one else coud or would do. The only obvious difference is a Japan hardware lead wouldn't have developed something like Kinect with its space requirements.

I don't see the reasoning as to why a Toshiba or Panasonic badged XB360, had it launched in 2005 under one of those badges, would have done better. The whole US-hardware reservations seem bunk to me going by various points raised so far. They certainly couldn't have designed a better box, nor provided one as easy to develop for.

 

[Ghostz]

Toshiba designed PS2's Reality Synthesiser. Cell was a co-design between Toshiba and IBM with Sony. Cheezdoodle's tongue-ni-cheek point is Japanese desigined hardware would be esoteric and awkward. In reality, every system design now can be handled by any tech company with a little sense. You buy a CPU from ARM, IBM or AMD/Intel, and a GPU from AMD, nVidia (if you want to waste money, going by other console contracts) or one of the mobile IHVs. Stick 'em together with other standard components and you have a box that can run software. The hard part is more getting a cost effective design, although as everything's mix-n-match these days I don't feel that's such a big issue, and getting development tools to actually use the stuff. In the case of mobile devices, all these Japanese companies can piece together a tablet or handset, but it takes someone else to create a software platform (Google, MS). There's nothing really a Japanese company could do designing a console for Japan that no-one else coud or would do. The only obvious difference is a Japan hardware lead wouldn't have developed something like Kinect with its space requirements.

I don't see the reasoning as to why a Toshiba or Panasonic badged XB360, had it launched in 2005 under one of those badges, would have done better. The whole US-hardware reservations seem bunk to me going by various points raised so far. They certainly couldn't have designed a better box, nor provided one as easy to develop for.

....yet, neither Reality Synthesiser, nor the Cell are exactly state of the art microprocessors which was my point when I stated "high end".

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I beg to differ about Cell which was seriously high-end programmable computation performance per watt and is still strong to this day; and what your saying goes along with Cheezedoodles anyway - he was saying Japan couldn't release a strong console, and you're saying the same. Edit - Oh, you're saying Cheeze is wrong about CPU. Well, the only CPU's I know to come from Japan are Cell, whcih of course wasn't, although the SPUs are a Toshiba design and thet've created SPURSEngine from that although that isn't a CPU but an accelerator or computation unit. But his comment was a tongue-in-cheek jab at Sony's CPU-heavy console designs.

 

[egoless]

Delete

 

[function]

Taking a short trip down memory lane, didn't Dreamcast have two competing designs? Was the japanese design more cpu focused than the american one which I assume was more gpu focused? I can't quite remember.

The Voodoo 2 derived Sega of American console had a much weaker GPU than the Dreamcast, which had a rather kickass and genuinely bleeding edge GPU that was not based on a PC processor.

I do remember Sega boasting about Dreamcast's ability to run Windows CE though. Was that the death toll that the console had any association with evil Microsoft?

The MS thing almost helped imo. The death told started ringing back with the 32X and got louder and louder the more Sega of Japan interfered with Sega of America.

Japan just seems to be an impenetrable market for western console vendors as their native software development simply fails against the entrenched tastes of Japanese gamers. At least that's how it looks to me. MS tried hard to get a Japanese ecosystem estabished but then seemed to give up when they realised just how hard (expensive) it would be and that they'd get better returns form the same kind of investment in Europe. Or just about anywhere else. At least that's how it looks to me ...

Maybe they'll try again next generation.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

And as for the Kinect comment, you are aware the $30 Nyko attachment allows people to play without the "extreme" distance from the TV?

No, I've never even heard of it (so your snarky comment about deliberate griping for fanboy reasons is misplaced), but that, if anything, highlights my point. If it's possible to run Kinect in a smaller room via an add-on, it could have been built with that in mind, or an official attachment could have been provided. The fact MS didn't support a smaller room out of the box is likely due to the US-centric thought process of that organisation, where homes are typical severally times larger than various European and Asian countries. If the same engineers lived in Japan when they built Kinect, they would have no doubt addressed the space issue in a manner similar to Nyko. That clearly wasn't a reason for 360's lack of adoption in Japan though, as Kinect is only a new thing. I don't see any other hardware aspects that a Japanese or European culture would design differently. Issues like size, levied against XB1, clearly aren't an insurmountable issue as PS3 sold with the same handicap.