Xbox 360 Arcade launching at a reduced price in Japan
Microsoft still isn’t going to give up on their attempts to make the Xbox 360 a success in the Japanese market. Microsoft has announced that the Xbox 360 Arcade is set to launch in Japan next month at the reduced price of 27,800 yen in yet another attempt to boost sales there.
Yahoo! News is reporting that the Xbox 360 Arcade, which replaced the Xbox 360 Core model back in October 2007, is coming to Japan on March 6, 2008. The Xbox 360 Arcade, which will cost 27,800 yen (approximately €175 or $260 US) in Japan, comes with neither a Hard Drive nor component cables and generally appeals more to casual gamers. It is likely that Microsoft decided to sell the Xbox 360 Arcade for this price as it costs only 2,800 yen more than the Nintendo Wii.
But will Microsoft’s latest plan do anything to increase Xbox 360 sales? Last year, Microsoft only managed to sell 260,000 Xbox 360 consoles in Japan which is 3 times less than Sony’s Playstation 2. As well as that, Microsoft has sold less than 550,000 Xbox 360 consoles altogether in Japan, making it the least popular of the three next generation consoles there.
screw japan. they can keep their turn-based rpgs and their cutesy novelty crap. xbox is for shooters, real mens games. no motion sickness here, just ard as nails bastards shooting virtual cunts for guts n glory. grrrrrrr.
Lol. We’re MEN!!! *Manly growl*
The Arcade HAS a wireless controller. It has no HDD nor a HD cable but has HDMI which makes a component cable more useless anyway.
This price also seems to make the rumour of a pricedrop for the Arcade in europe to €199 more likely. Probably before the launch of GTAIV. Microsoft didn’t invest all those millions in that game for nothing. They want it to sell a lot machines. And at 199 it’s quite a steal.
Indeed it does, my mistake. I was thinking of the Core model. Fixed now, thanks.
Damn right ! Fuck Japan and their stupid happy games, I haven’t seen a single decent Japanese game since FFIII.
P.S. Fuck wii too
How fuckin much more is MS gonna give Japan!! Theyre all the time giving them price breaks and shit!!! Give up, the Japanese aint bitin!!! They need to quit worrying about Japan and focus on the other countries that are actually supporting the 360!!!
Microsoft has no choice but to lower the price to make it more attractive in Japan. They desperately need support from Japanese and Asian developers.You will find the Wii and the PS3 both sell at a lower price than in the USA.
There’s only one possible way for Microsoft to make the 360 a success in Japan
1. They need to give it away for free to anyone who signs up for 2 years of XBox Live. Throw a bunch of XBox Live Arcade titles in for free too, but no full retail games.
2. MS needs to drop the retail price of all 360 games to $10 cheaper than either PS3 or Wii games, or even less where they can.
3. Go live with XBox Live Video Marketplace RIGHT NOW and load it up with every major Japanese TV show and Anime movie they can crank out. Get people used to the idea of buying by giving them all 1000 Live points when they sign up and an extra 200 a month. Also give the first episode or two of every TV series away (just like they do with Witchblade in the U.S. - I never would have bought it except for I downloaded the free first episode and really liked it).
Bottom line, if Microsoft wants to crack the Japanese market, they need to subsidize the hardware. They’re making a huge mistake by pushing the system without a hard drive when Video sales are the #1 way they can recoup their investment. Yes MS charges a lot of money for the 360 hard drives but they don’t COST that much - they are just standard 2.5″ SATA laptop drives in a custom plastic enclosure.
And make the Console and power brick a lot smaller. from everything Ive read the Japanese Hate hoy huge the power brick is and dont really like the design of the console!!! Thats why they like the WII b/c it is a small system and has a unique design as far as consoles go!!!
“Comment by Timothy Tripp on 2008-02-17 09:24:16 | Reply
There’s only one possible way for Microsoft to make the 360 a success in Japan
1. They need to give it away for free to anyone who signs up for 2 years of XBox Live. Throw a bunch of XBox Live Arcade titles in for free too, but no full retail games.
2. MS needs to drop the retail price of all 360 games to $10 cheaper than either PS3 or Wii games, or even less where they can.
3. Go live with XBox Live Video Marketplace RIGHT NOW and load it up with every major Japanese TV show and Anime movie they can crank out. Get people used to the idea of buying by giving them all 1000 Live points when they sign up and an extra 200 a month. Also give the first episode or two of every TV series away (just like they do with Witchblade in the U.S. - I never would have bought it except for I downloaded the free first episode and really liked it).
Bottom line, if Microsoft wants to crack the Japanese market, they need to subsidize the hardware. They’re making a huge mistake by pushing the system without a hard drive when Video sales are the #1 way they can recoup their investment. Yes MS charges a lot of money for the 360 hard drives but they don’t COST that much - they are just standard 2.5″ SATA laptop drives in a custom plastic enclosure.”
or they could just include a soiled pair of girls undies and the system would sell like crazy:)
Even if it was 10,000yen here it wouldn’t sell. Simply because of the lack of brand wareness (xbox ??), and many major electronics retailers don’t even sell the thing. Everyone knows Blue Dragon here, yet even though the anime series is sponsored by the xbox brand, kids etc… are still not aware of it.
The anime movie download service might do the trick, but I think anime based RPGs and causual games are likely to be more sucessful.
Wow. Microsoft is really sucking it up in Japan. They will have to do a lot more than just release the arcade version to get more sales.