Falcoms gone PS4 exclusive so its a surprise to hear Japanese success is their only priority.
you're making it sound like microsoft tried with two games and when they got no results in a month they put the arms up in the air and said "WELP WE'RE OUT"
instead of you know, trying since the launch of the original xbox till mid-end of the 360s (the longest gaming generation so far) life
I felt like Microsoft was about to break the Japanese market open with a volley of exclusive jRPGs until they all started getting ported to PS3 with extra features. That was what did them in.
Exactly. Let them be downloaded only. Scrape together whatever little Japanese support you can however you can. You would think they would be so desperate as to try anything but they obviously don't see the need. That needs to change.
I'm sure nintendo had a console where it would work when they released WW in 2014
It's not magic, it would have been more successful, because i'm not defending them being nintendo exclusives, but ports - unless you don't think trails in the sky would sell enough to at least cover port costs in a nintendo console for whatever reason and i am the one curious now
The dumbest thing about Microsoft's apparent stance is that Japan will never support Xbox if they don't give them a reason to. Digital only for these niche titles is as close to zero cost as you can get. I don't expect MS to have a big JP campaign at this point, but it's a little disappointing to hear that they don't give a shit at all.
But Phil went to Japan and everything.
We really don't know why Phil went to Japan.But Phil went to Japan and everything.
Didn't FFXV sell like 300 copies on Xbox One?
Whats way worst? this from ms or no crossplay from sony
Investing in Japanese studios is lip service. It's a shrinking market. I'm fine with them ignoring it. No great loss. They're better off investing in their own studios and growing their market that way.
Investing in Japanese studios is lip service. It's a shrinking market. I'm fine with them ignoring it. No great loss. They're better off investing in their own studios and growing their market that way.
Personal attacks against people at companies you don't like is really lame.
But Phil went to Japan and everything.
but Asia,Western and all those stuffs,Dont both two of them contradict each other?Japan is where they target their efforts and where their biggest fan base is. Any money other regions bring them these days is just a happy plus.
They don't have much reason to because the domestic market has no interest in the platform. They will release games on Xbox if those games appeal to the western Xbox audience (Naruto, DBZ, Souls and similar titles) but the more niche stuff doesn't sell on Xbox in Japan or America so why bother?Two way street. Japan isnt very supportive of Xbox One either. Capcom Square and Bamco release most of their big games and you get the occasional smaller titles like Raiden V and Superbeat Xonic but its pittance compared to what the Playstation gets.
They don't have much reason to because the domestic market has no interest in the platform. They will release games on Xbox if those games appeal to the western Xbox audience (Naruto, DBZ, Souls and similar titles) but the more niche stuff doesn't sell on Xbox in Japan or America so why bother?
But Phil went to Japan and everything.
I wonder if he really even goes. Probably takes a week off and tells everybody hes in Kapan.
This isn't a story about the Xbox One. The 360 had games, Japanese exclusives, price, and power, didn't sell for shit in Japan.
Personally I think the 360's failure in Japan is overstated. It sold 1.5 million, carved out a small niche for itself and was supported for more or less the full life span of the 360.
I'm sure that is a big reason why way more japanese games were multiplat last gen and not just the very western oriented ones.
By comparison the XB1 sold 80 thousand. A complete DOA failure of a platform in Japan.
I think a fair comparison would be that the 360 was like the Vita in the west, while the XB1 was like the N-Gage.
That being said I don't necessarily think it was wrong for microsoft to ignore Japan. They invested a lot to get the 360 to where it was and I can't imagine it was worth it to them to continue to do so.
This doesnt bother me because I dont like Japanese games anyway.
Beside, most Japanese companies now focus on mobile games which are more profitable. And Japanese players have lost interest in console gaming.
So why would MS support them?
What? No, it sold a lot more than that. Where did you take that number from?
They may not have a viable business in Japan but they can have business selling me Japanese games in the US.
To be honest the PS4 is definitely a western console if anything, it gets it's Japanese games purely because of the relationships Sony has with certain publishers and the willingness of its userbase on buying Japanese games compared to the Xbox userbase.
The PS5 will fall into irrelevance in Japan but will still get its (niche) Japanese games here and there.
Sony's always been quite foreign focused, you should have noticed this with all the UK and American's they have in their game division, ignoring their music and film workforce make up.Sony is hardly an American company in my mind, am I wrong in that thinking?
Sony pictures / music, sure, always thought of them as an American company, but all of Sony's consumer hardware companies have always come across as purely Japanese.
Again, am I getting this wrong or sumthin'?
"Honestly speaking, Microsoft's approach to Japanese games hasn't been very supportive."
This is uninformative. Define "supportive". My issue with this is it does not convey actual circumstances but rather placates to a perception very easily.
What support does NIS require to get their game out? Are these demands reasonable? Is Microsoft "unsupportive" (lack of support does not mean causing functional problems doing so.)
The "also" statement of MS having minimum order quantities clearly isn't their holdup as they added it as a post-statement. So what outside of this order minimum is required to be supportive?
We do not know because the statement is unfortunately lacking. Either by omission in article or by "drive by comment" on the part of NIS.
What we do know is the following statement is more accurate: Xbox sells horribly in Japan. I personally do not believe MS can do anything about that, though this doesn't answer whether or not they should try. 3 Generations, 2 with legitimate marketing attempts (entire branches devoted to trying to make those ties with native Japanese workers) and nothing.
When someone says, "You don't support me" you have to ask, are you insisting someone carries you or is there a mutual give/take? Personally, I'm suspicious of the statement and feel it's much more of a corporate "here's your reason you'll gobble up" rather than any real indication as to why they don't actually work with MS, just done in a Japanese way.
Perhaps it's a basic business decision for Japanese-centric businesses to not take the risk on the "possible" sales when data on their own shores shows it wouldn't sell on an Xbox because no one owns an Xbox in Japan. To me, that makes much more sense and is much more informative than "we're not supported" (but I cannot define what support would be.)
The thing is they sell the idea that they are active in looking for solutions for jpn games on xbox but the results speak for themselvesI mean... why would they be?
They don't have much reason to because the domestic market has no interest in the platform. They will release games on Xbox if those games appeal to the western Xbox audience (Naruto, DBZ, Souls and similar titles) but the more niche stuff doesn't sell on Xbox in Japan or America so why bother?
I always found it weird that there is a Microsoft Japan and they never bothered to open any studios over there, rarely got an exclusive games, only a handful of RPG partnerships exclusives that seemed to be more of a push from NA MS than Japan. I'm not sure how accurate it is but someone told me apparently a lot of MS 1st party games aren't even dubbed over there.
Does MS Japan just party a lot or something?
Investing in Japanese studios is lip service. It's a shrinking market. I'm fine with them ignoring it. No great loss. They're better off investing in their own studios and growing their market that way.