The Xbox 360 and Japanese Nationalism 111
Ant writes "4 Color Rebellion has a transcript of a segment included with its recent Podcast. The piece concerns the launch of the Xbox 360 in Japan, a launch that's amounting to one of the weakest in Japanese gaming history. The authors look into the reasons behind the failure, and try to dissuade gamers from some poorly thought-out rationalizations for the console's lack of success." From the article: "McDonalds knew that some of its tastes would not appeal to the Japanese so they changed their menus. Along with the standard Big Macs and fries they also have Teriyaki burgers, fried shrimp burgers, and other things for the Japanese pallet. They didn't force the American tastes on the Japanese and thus, they thrived. Now look at the Japanese Xbox 360 launch lineup. First person Shooters, sports and car games. Games that sell really well in America but other than the car games are not to the Japanese taste. Had they launched with RPGs, simulation games, party games, gambling games and fighters, they might have done a whole lot better. McDonalds changed their company for the Japanese taste. Microsoft tried to change the Japanese taste for their company."
It's not just the japanese... (Score:2, Interesting)
Excess inventory? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:XBOX360 Culture (Score:2, Interesting)
I like the Gran Turismo series, and I like to write. Writing takes time. However, GT4 has 700+ car models. It's gotta take someone some time to make those. Then you have to collect the performance data for each vehicle (and I've seen photos of the GT4 team test-driving the actual cars with data-gathering gear attached all over). It's gotta take some time to simply find the real-life cars you want to include in your game.
Then you have to generate those static tracks. The real-life tracks featured in GT4 (Laguna Seca, Nurburgring, etc) were all meticulously surveyed - the virtual versions are supposed to be within 15mm of their real-life counterparts. That's gotta take some time, not only to collect the data, but to convert it into a format that can be used to render the track on game.
I'd say that both RPG's and driving simulators take a ton of time to do, but perhaps in different areas. It does take a long time to write out a good back story, and it takes a lot of time to gather up all of the data that you need to make a good driving game (arcade racers, I'm sure, take a lot less time).
Excellent points. (Score:3, Interesting)
This also isn't a strictly-Japanese thing. In the early 2000's (from the Super NES onwards), there was this perceived slight in the U.S. over Nintendo, before Sony and Microsoft took over the game console market. Nintendo of America was, functionally, a branch office of Nintendo of Japan (where the translators worked). Sony and Microsoft read more correctly what American gamers wanted — and Sony is a Japanese company. I believe NOA has more input into the process now. Not that this stopped them; NOA still successfully brought over Mario Party, Pokémon, and Harvest Moon --> Animal Crossing.
It's interesting to note that "The Last Samurai" wasn't received well in theatres on this side of the pond. It did well because it had Tom Cruise in it, before he went psycho.
Kudos on the "Japans can be racist too" comment. Japanese have a low level of memory and anger about Hiroshima. There's magnitudes more anger at Chinese. See this article [csmonitor.com] for more insight.
Selling abroad is difficult (Score:3, Interesting)
There must be some reason why koreans love Starcraft while the west liked and moved on.
The article does however make a couple of mistakes. It somehow credits McDonalds and Apple with getting it right. Sorry but McD learned the hardway and Apples success with the iPod is just lucky that western tastes and japanese tastes happen to match up in this instance. If Apple really had a clue they would have insisted on all their content deals for iTunes to be international. Selling song X to a world audience must generate larger sales then just to a fraction considering there is no extra cost.
One thing however that most people forget is how that the japanese in general SUCK at english. Yeah yeah and americans suck at japanese BUT the americans have the advantage of their main language being THE international language. Americans can afford to be lazy.
I am currently watching far to much japanse idol tv (Morning Musume) and while teenage girls are never a good indication of a country's education it becomes pretty clear that there english skill are very poor if compared to the english skill of mainland europeans. If you don't believe me use google. http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=ayaka/ [google.com] should give you a bunch of short clips showing a member of the group who was born and raised in hawaii giving english lessons to the japanese members.
Considering they are around the age of 16 on average it is nothing their english teacher should be proud of.
Learning a new language, especially one that has no common root, is hard. The hardest part is getting the basics, if you do not understand a simple sentence you do not use the language so you never get experience so you never learn to understand a simple sentence so you do not use it. ETC ETC. Japan probably isn't like holland were people of my generation had a choice, you watch american tv shows or you go play outside. If you didn't like the american show on then that was though, we had 1 tv station.
I think the problem is two-fold, MS being a bit of the typical arrogant american, and the japanese being just a little to snobbish to learn the international language of the world. Oh well at least this might mean Europe becomes a less neglected market.
Oh and if anyone wishes to point out that chinese is spoken by more people then english, I didn't say that. I said english is the international language. More people speak english as their 2nd or 3rd language then any other language. It is the language two people with different mother languages are most likely to have in common. Yes even the french. They all speak perfect english, they just enjoy being rude to americans. Who doesn't.
Re:XBOX360 Culture (Score:3, Interesting)
Japan and the Xbox360 (Score:3, Interesting)
As for the failure of the Xbox360 in Japan, I agree that it's due to Microsoft's complete lack of understanding of that market. I really don't understand how they didn't see this coming. That said, if the Xbox360 and PS3 were released on the same day, with identical line-ups and at the same price the Xbox360 still would sell badly. Unlike Americans who generally would choose the foreign product, Japanese would overwhelmingly gravitate towards the Japanese product.
I wouldn't say it's xenophobic, necessarily. That's just how they are. They still have nationalistic pride I suppose, something Americans are sorely lacking. The foreign products that do well are generally fashionable or luxury items. European luxury cars are always popular, as are european fashions in general. Hip hop culture has certainly had a big impact, although it's been diluted and changed in a way that renders it unrecognizable.
Apple products have been successful for a few reasons. First of all, Macs have always been popular because of their ease of us. Japanese consumers are generally not inclined to deal with anything complicated. This is different from elsewhere in Asia, like Taiwan and Korea where PCs dominate the market. In those nations they want something that does it all that they can tinker with. It's why consoles are still so important in Japan and virtually no existant elsewhere in Asia.
iPods have the advantage of being easy to use and very fashionable. And given how much disposable income Japanese have, buying an iPod is nothing to them. That, however, doesn't stop Japanese companies from trying to make an iPod rival, or a rival for anything foreign. And they often try to prove that their products are superior, whether they are or not.
Again, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. It just shows that they've got pride in what they do. Not just the manager, or the engineer, but the guy working on the factory floor, when it isn't a robot doing the job also cares about his job. It isn't like the US, and most western nations where workers are out for themselves and could care less what happens to the company.
And it's not Japanese corporations that foster this attitude, it's the culture itself, because managment generally treat their workers like crap. They do so in ways that would be considered illegal in the US. Japanese managers are known to be abusive with employees. It doesn't happen everywhere, but it's common enough.
Japanese generally don't treat foreigners well. They avoid sitting next to foreigners on trains, I think mainly to avoid being stuck in some potential uncomfortable situation. For a society who's young people have been drawn to hip hop they still manage to gawk at black guys. I've had numerous friends who've been rejected apartments for no reason other than being a foreigner, and the landlord was very direct about the reason. It's common to walk into a store and have the employees stare at you. Some Japanese just think foreigners buy weird stuff and are compelled to follow them around the store. They also like making sweeping generalizations about foreigners, usually based on what they see in movies.
Then there are all the laws that generally give foreigners a hard time. And unlike the US where the government is excessively easy, even on illegal immigrants, in Japan even a minor infraction can be enough to get a foreigner deported.
It's true, you encounter this sort of thing all over the world. But the reality is that Japan is especially bad. In Taiwan, by contrast, they're far more comfortable with foreigners, being very open towards them. It may
Not saying much (Score:2, Interesting)
But true, Microsoft has failed again to wow the Japanese market which continues the entire lackluster roll out of the Xbox360. They aren't wowing North American audiences with their overheating and locking up problems either.
The question is, why is this Microsoft's fault? Where are the Japanese game developers and why aren't they developing more Japan specific titles? Microsoft is releasing the hardware, they have offered an Xbox360 development kit for over a year now, so why can't the dedicated game houses in Japan pick up the ball and start making the Xbox360 an attractive game console for their own markets? Do they have to wait for Microsoft to ask them to make a game?
Anyways, I think Xbox360 failures is just because MS rushed it out the door. Both Quality Control and title support were lacking in all markets, MS could have waited for a few more months for more RPG's to hit the market and they really should have beta tested the platform better. But I mean, MS isn't the only software vendor for the Xbox platform, so the lack of interest in Japan isn't entirely all their fault.
same old song (Score:1, Interesting)
No soccer or cricket. No rally racing or F1 racing. They sat in their Seattle ivory tower like everyone else was just another one of them.
Hell, I could see back then that Japan was a lost cause. He didn't even say "RPG" once during the whole presentation when any armchair analyst will list Squaresoft moving to Playstation as one of the reasons for Nintendo's downfall. Sure, Ninty did the whole cartridge thing that caused them to do it, but as evidenced by gameboy sales the cartridge format isn't dead or at all incompatible with the RPG genre.
I figured, hey, maybe they are going to buy Squaresoft and just let them figure out how to win Japan. Maybe they should have back when Square was struggling under the Spirits Within financial burden. They sure as hell couldn't have done any worse than they have.
But no. They didn't learn one bit. The Xbox 360's launch lineup was even WORSE than the original Xbox's. They didn't even have Sega backing them up with Jet Set Radio Future, much less the kinds of titles that regularly top sales charts in Japan.