Gamasutra Special: The State Of Japanese Game Retail Posted by XanTium | September 18 20:05 EST

From gamasutra.com: [QUOTE] There have been plenty of articles in the past pontificating on the Japanese game market. But very few seem to have taken things down to a granular practical level, by simply analyzing what is stocked on Japanese video game store shelves, and how it differs to what we see in North America. Xbox 360 - Not Quite Dead Yet Now, given the news that Microsoft's Xbox 360 has sold less than 100,000 hardware units so far this year in Japan, and likely under 150,000 to date in the territory, one might wonder whether it would be impossible to find the hottest U.S. console in Japanese stores at all. It was actually fairly easy - there was a demo Xbox 360 unit set up at the Odaiba branch of Toys 'R Us, and a similar unit at Sofmap in Shinjuku, and a not insignificant stash of games in each. Of course, this was just one shelf for Xbox 360 titles, compared to three for PSP and five or more for DS (and no Xbox 1 games in Toys 'R Us at all!) But it is notable that Microsoft has managed to get such strong Japanese developer support for the first few months of its console. By a rough count, around 50% of the Xbox 360 titles displayed on Japanese shelves were developed natively, and around 30% of those are Japanese exclusive right now. These Japanese X360 exclusives include New Japan Pro Wrestling and newer games such as Zegapain XOR, and cost around 6599 yen ($55.10), incidentally, fairly similar to some PlayStation 2 game prices. But are these Japan exclusives going to dry up, if the horrid installed base makes it difficult to sell more than 10,000 copies of any one title? Quite possibly, though titles that are saleable in multiple territories, especially North America, will certainly continue to be produced. It'll be interesting to see how Microsoft discusses this issue in its pre-TGS press conference this Wednesday. [/QUOTE] Read More: gamasutra.com

interesting.

I hope 360 wins..and playstation goes down in flames... i hate playstations!!!!!!

*caugh* fanboy *caugh* haha. Honestly i have no problem with playstations in general, I have one and I love playing some of the games. What I just don't like is all the crap Sony gave M$ about the 360 ESPECIALLY about having two different kits. I don't want Sony to go away totally I just want them to suffer real bad. Back on topic thats good news that the 360 still has some life in it.

All japanese stuff is overrated in western countries for reasons that are beyond me.

Sure, there are some well done and innovative titles now and then that I'd like to see on x360 as well, but most people can't seem to grasp the fact that they make loads of crappy titles there all the time. No matter how many low-graded hack'n'slash, beat 'em up and uninnovative RPGs we see on the gaming magazines every month, the usual delusion still seems to be that all the games are somehow superior there.

Sheesh, wake up. Japan deserves its respect like the other countries, but stop putting it on the pedestal all the time.

MS has fiercely hunted japanese suport for 360, but I was wondering, if current 360 situation in jp persists, how long they would be able to keep jp developers from bailing.
The little jp studios, that are responsible for over 50% of all Ps2 games(games that were never released outside jp), shouldn't be able to make games global. They usualy need the game to success in jp(besides being remotely appealing to westerns) first so they can translate and publish it elsewhere.

I'm not sure if jp studios can make games strictly for the western market but make japan oriented games only for the west does seen bizarre.