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2005-11-22T222459Z_01_NOOTR_RTRIDSP_2_TE

 

US Game geeks lined up for hours salivating waiting to get their hands on the first 360's.

 

Many reports appearing from disgruntled new owners that the machine crashes or freezes and pops up with error messages.

Error messages? crashes? from a microsoft product, now that is something new! :rolleyes:

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Is it just me, or does that guy with the first 360 looks like Bill?

 

Even the xbox.com forum is full of disgruntled posters with faulty machines.. amazing that they'd ship such an error prone product, some of them even eat up the DVD discs! (How? I don't know..)

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Is this being blown out of all proportion or are there really lots of problems? If I remember correctly, there are things like this going on in a very small % of most new consoles on the market. No excuse of course.

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I read it was the power supply, rather than the machine itself that was getting heated. Microsoft putting out a machine that crashes - you'd think they'd do everything possible to avoid those rather obvious headlines.

 

Games any good?

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Had a go on one yesterday it was looking pretty awesome. Had a go on Perfect Dark Zero which was good & Need for Speed.

 

Ridge Racer 6 looked pretty much like a high-end xbox game I suppose.

 

Hoping someone might get me one for Christmas \:\)

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Xbox on sale tomorrow in Japan.... I wonder if anyone knows?!

 

Check this out

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4511772.stm

 

Microsoft is taking its fight to rule the video games arena to Sony's and Nintendo's home ground, with the launch of its Xbox 360 in Japan on Saturday.

 

The software giant is hoping that its next generation games console will make up for the poor performance of its original Xbox in Japan.

 

The Xbox is estimated to make up just 5% of the Japanese games market, compared to 80% for the PlayStation.

 

---

 

Er.... DON'T THINK SO. More like 0.5%.

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It was on the news here about how there were 'queues' of about 4 or 5 people at some stores waiting to buy one. Quite embarrassing publicity that.

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Outside of Bic they had a few 360 consoles going and the sexy chicks in xbox gear, but even they could not tempt anyone to play the thing so it seemed. I was there waiting for someone for about 15 minutes at lunchtime and no-one touched the things. Not the girls, the xboxes.

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Not doing as well as the first one, apparently:

 

Microsoft's Japanese Xbox division may have thrown a couple of loud parties to coincide with the Japanese launch of the Xbox 360 (see our full coverage here), but outside of the main Shibuya launch event, the system was greeted with a quiet reception. Enterbrain, the publisher of the Famitsu magazines and also an independent retail tracker of game products, reports that MS managed to sell through 62,135 hardware units over the console's first two days of release following the 12/10 launch. Enterbrain estimates hardware shipping totals at 159,000 units.

 

 

In terms of software, the biggest selling of the Xbox 360 launch titles was Ridge Racer 6, which pushed 29,891 units. Perfect Dark Zero came in at second, with 14,897 units sold, followed by Need For Speed, which took third with 6,842 units. Enterbrain hasn't made public sales for the other launch titles, but lists an overall 0.91 software to hardware tie-in ratio, which means that for every one Xbox 360 unit sold, 0.91 pieces of software were bought. Extrapolating from the Enterbrain numbers, this suggests software sales totaling around 62,000 units.

The source of this data is a group of 3,500 retailers throughout Japan that Enterbrain uses to compile the top 30 sales chart published every week in Famitsu, Japan's largest game magazine. Enterbrain takes the totals obtained from these sources and uses statistical techniques to come to an estimate for total sales. The numbers out of Enterbrain tend to differ from the numbers out of another tracker, Media Create, sometimes being higher and sometimes lower. For Xbox 360 hardware sales, Media Create lists a total of 41,817 hardware units.

 

Whatever the numbers, one thing is clear: the Xbox 360 is selling worse than the original Xbox did back when it hit Japan in February of 2002. According to Enterbrain's figures, Xbox managed sales of 123,929 units and a software-hardware tie ratio of 1.45 pieces of software for every system over its first three days.

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Japanese market is not very significant in the global scheme of things, but what with Japan being a major producer of video games, I wonder how significant it is to game makers and consumers (symbolically and psychologically) to get a stronghold in Japan?

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I disagree with that - the Japanese market is very significant.

 

Microsoft desperately want to get a stronghold in Japan. It just seems like an impossible task - as people just are not interested.

 

Wait to PS3 comes out next spring and that will come even more sharly into focus.

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Japanese video game market is very different from the US market. RPGs and cute character games are popular here, while the big sellers in the States are FPS and sports games. So, console makers need different focus and strategy to be successful. Looks like 360's trying to put more effort into releasing games that appeal to the Japanese market, though they did try with the Xbox, the effort just seemed halfassed with the number of games for the j-market that they released.

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There is just a total lack of interest here, probably due to quite a few things. Microsoft seem to make some stoopid decisions themselves though - like launching at Tokyo Game Show with some FPS that doesn't excite the Japanese, launching some bar in Omotesando rather than Akihabara etc. If they were successful strategies we'd say different - thing is they just look silly.

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