IGN News - Why Did Xbox 360 Fail in Japan?

The Xbox 360 has been a failure in Japan, which is strange when you consider how much it dominates the North American market, as well as parts of Europe.

[HypeMyke]

yeah, and their losing a lot of money because third party developers don't make games for them, and even if they did, people are most likely going to play them on the xbox and PS3

[mightza]

First person shooters aren't big in Japan, RPGs are. Famitsu gave Skyrim a 40/40, perfect score. One of the features they really enjoyed was the ability to play in 3rd person as an option.

[warrenkeith]

im a PS person until the end thanks to Kingdom Hearts, Persona 3, and Persona 4.

[vVstrand]

When does the Why Did Xbox One Fail in Japan video come out? xD

[ezgaming]

simple, because Xbox 360 has such a high failure rate

[gavin]

Still, $12 a year isn't a big deal especially when we always got insane specials.
It's personal preference in the end, and I like both.
Shooters for Xbox, and RPG's for play station 3.
Though I like Xbox's controller better and such.

[GodSpeedL]

I love both systems because well, THERE NO NINTENDO CRAP!!! thank you.

[larsattack]

I can not believe I've been arguing with a person that doesn't know the difference between 'shipped' and 'sold'.

[gavin]

Neither is better dude, it's all about personal preference.
I compared both, they're about the same so it doesn't matter.

[rabidheartbeats]

i don't know why this popped up on my Reccomendations 5 years later but let me give an update: XBOX One is an even bigger failure in Japan. Most shops don't even sell the games, let alone the console. They do sell some used 360 games on recycle shops tho

[anniekrul]

when you look at sales, yes. I have heard alot of complaints concerning the xbox when it comes to services that are available in the US but for some reason people here in europe have trouble with those services, im not sure how much of that is true though. Though most of the time when i see microsoft presenting the xbox i feel like they focus on the US rather than the world

[shadowlink]

No surprise the Xbox 360 has tanked in Japan like its predecessors. The Japanese's taste om gaming are vastly different from Western gamers. The 360 relies too much on First Person Shooters nowadays, which most of Japanese usually despise that genre.

[RnTSkywalker]

i dunno if its different in America, but here (Canada) theres a tiny little box on the dashboard for ads, you dont see it unless you go to it. everything else is to tell you whats going on, like contests and new games/movies available.

[DragonSlayer]

I live in America and we have 5 PS3's in our house and 1 Xbox 360. How would you consider that failing in the U.S.?

[funakiexpressV]

Makes sense, but how do you explain Nintendo and the Wii?

[BrownSugar]

Because it had a blu ray player, do you know how expensive they were back then?

[Shippoyasha]

The Xbox 360 has a pretty formidable amount of Japanese shmup games, visual novel games and other Japanese otaku centric games. A lot of them are good. But they aren't marketed as heavily. The console needs a more Japanese friendly aesthetic in the future plus work harder to get the big 3rd party Japanese games that Nintendo and Sony has. But by no means is it a total failure. 360 is still tops in the Japanese shmup genre.

[gavin]

Well, if you're refering to graphics, you're not a gamer.
Graphics don't make the game better do, the gameplay does.
Also, why would you complain about spending $12 a year for xbox live gold? Surely you're not THAT poor right?
Major difference is the games are cheaper.
Plus sometimes on games that just came out even though they are $60, on the market they are $40 for specials. Don't forget, you can license transfer everything and give friends a ton of stuff. Either way it's personal preference.

[obedencia]

i live in japan for almost 5 years now, its quite true that japanese people are loyal to their own product.

[BrownSugar]

Microsoft didn't give a damn to branch out? Microsoft tried so hard to sell 360s in Japan, they paid Japanese studios to make exclusives for them, such as Tales of Vesperia, but they ended up failing.