"Europe is our priority focus right now," said Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft's group product manager for Xbox.
After failing to capture market shares in Japan from Sony and Nintendo with a one-year head start, Microsoft may be running out of ideas to woo gamers in Japan and will target video gamers in Europe as the priority. The European gaming market was worth $7.8 billion in 2006; Japan's was $5.9 billion.
"It's difficult to see Microsoft capturing a significant share in Japan; after two years on the market, Xbox's position in the country is such that it makes you wonder whether further efforts are even worth it," said Hiroshi Kamide, a Tokyo-based games analyst at KBC Securities Japan. Kamide also said competition in the U.S. and European markets will make Japan a lower priority for Microsoft.
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Name someone that isn't trying to look us these days maybe cdpr.
Take two, ubi and yes even PlayStation are pushing us to own nothing and be happy with our live service ad injected games on a sub so they can raise prices at will and take access away when they see fit.
If it keeps up I'll be a full time retro gamer and this industry will be crashing hard
As rediculas as it sounds we need government reforms to defend consumer rights
which is totally at odds with what they said and showed at TGS....hmmm
And last I checked...America was their priority market...
Smart move, Microsoft. The Japanese don't like your system for obvious reasons? No problem. Just make the Xbox brand known in Japan so the Japanese companies can make software for your console while tagerting Europe and North America. Took them a while figure that one out.
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Relatively speaking, European values are much, much closer to American than Japanese to American. The types of games Europeans make, play and prefer are also much closer to the types of games American make, play and prefer: they are all "Western" games. Think X-Com (UK), the Longest Journey (Norway), Gothic (Germany). They are all European games that were way more popular in the US than in Japan.
It makes sense for Microsoft to go after the European markets first before Japanese, and Microsoft can play a role in porting titles between the two continents. European game makers will get to expand into American markets, and American gamers will get bigger selections of Western titles that appeal to American taste much better (over Japanese titles.) Both European and American games markets will be happier. That's killing two birds with one stone.
Personally, I would rather play European games over Japanese ones... European games and stories are more coherent and make more sense to me.
It´s simply just wrong to evaluate the European tendencies all the same way. You simply can´t do it. While culturally and upstanding values wise it´s easier to identify US and Japanese Citizens in the same way you can´t do the same for the several Euro countries... Period.
But it´s been said before, if there´s ground to decide the so called Console Wars (sales wise the deciding territory) will be most likely Europe.
If we consider next-Gen being just 360 and PS3 (which is correct to assume Wii is not per se). I would probably say that:
- US will be 360
- Japan will be PS3
- Europe will hover between the two until next next Gen comes around
However there´s a odd unbalanced there which was for sure not unintentional. By the current scheme of things... the next MS machine will be launching way sooner than the next Sony console.
3 years tops would be my guess and that sort of makes it difficult to pinpoint "winners" or "lossers".
Just my 2 bits...
Give us good games...we´ll be happy regardless of the rest.
land a deal with square enix.