Pop quiz: How many Xbox 360’s were sold in Japan, a country of 127 million people, during the week of the Tokyo Game Show in September? The answer may shock you: 927. While the 360 in the U.S. usually moves around 50,000 units every week in the U.S., it’s Japanese sales have been abysmal, and Microsoft has begun to acknowledge the 360’s struggles in that country. A year ago Peter Moore was calling the Japan launch “solid if not spectacular,” but lately Microsoft has used adjectives such as “disappointing” to describe the situation. October’s surprising flurry of pre-orders for Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Blue Dragon (due this holiday) represents the first glimmer of hope the company has seen since the 360’s Japanese launch: retailers reported selling out of the 10,000 special edition of Blue Dragon console bundles quickly, followed by strong sales of approximately 90,000 additional standard bundles. So it’s fair to wonder: What’s the problem in Japan and does Microsoft have a chance to fix it? More importantly for United States gamers, how will the 360 fate in Japan impact the overall health of the platform and game development worldwide?
Microsoft’s challenges in Japan began with the original Xbox, which failed to gain traction against the PS2 and GameCube because of its ungainly physical size and, more importantly, its lack of compelling content for a market that favors turn-based RPG’s over shooters. When Peter Moore came to Microsoft from Sega, one of his first priorities was to fix this “Japan problem.” Moore tirelessly visited Japan every month to campaign for a strong slate of Japanese games for Xbox 360. By 2005, Moore had signed up Final Fantasy creator Sakaguchi and other developers such as Konami’s Hideo Kojima and Capcom’s Keiji Inafune. Combine that support with a slicker hardware design, and many inside Microsoft thought they had the Japan problem licked.
So imagine Microsoft’s distress when the Xbox 360 launched in Japan and began selling worse than the original Xbox. What went wrong? For starters, last year’s hottest gadget in Japan was the Nintendo DS, not the 360. Also, DOA 4’s delay meant no major Japanese games were ready at launch and Sakaguchi’s first wouldn’t arrive until late 2006. Microsoft had made much behind-the-scenes progress in Japan, but consumers weren’t showing up to buy 360’s.
And then, roughly 100,000 people asked for Blue Dragon. Microsoft remains bullish on the Japanese market: It points to the recent Tokyo Game Show, where consumers lined up for hours to check out Blue Dragons and Lost Odyssey (slated for 2007). The original, Japan-focused content is finally arriving, but Microsoft is already facing a chicken-or-egg problem. To encourage widespread 360 development, it needs a strong installed base in Japan. Yet some Japanese developers are already starting to write off the platform’s prospects. Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu recently polled 50 developers in which next-gen system they want to use for development: 63 percent picked the Wii, 32 percent said the PS3, leaving the Xbox 360 with the scraps: 5 percent.
Ironically, even if the 360 isn’t performing well in Japan, Japanese-designed games like Dead Rising are selling extraordinarily well in the U.S. And Capcom’s Lost Planet will likely be one of next year’s biggest hits. So certainly, some Japanese development will continue for the 360 regardless of the system’s success across the pacific. But even if the Japan problem won’t make a huge impact Stateside, there’s no question it puts a serious damper on Microsoft’s hope to “finish the fight: against the PlayStation around the world.
Still,a jump from 927 units sold in a week to nearly 100,000 pre-orders one month later can’t be ignored. The Japanese market – notoriously averse to foreign-made electronics – may be ready to make an exception. Blue Dragon may be the kick start the 360 needs…or, a year after launch, it may be too little, too late.
- Geoff Keighly