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disposablewords posted:Would market saturation have had a serious role to play? By the time Xbox was really a thing, Japan already had at least Nintendo and Playstation as local console lines with major market share. (If I recall correctly, the Dreamcast was on its way out from a poor reception when Xbox was finally arriving.) And Japan is a market that is, to be very frank, a lot smaller than the US, so there's just less in absolute numbers for Xbox to have wedged its way into when it came to being someone's choice for their second or third console. Or first, even. Half-assing an already pretty poor situation obviously wouldn't have helped either. Nintendo was irrelevant in Japan outside of Gameboy by the time Xbox launched. It was all Sony by then. Any reasons other than software are incorrect. People like to think of other reasons such as how Japanese refuse to buy foreign products, the size nonsense, internet gaming not being a factor, etc. The only reason Xbox failed was due to the lack of software, it had a relatively strong launch because of DOA3 and then nothing came out. If they had kept momentum up with lots of Japanese 3rd party titles that played best on the system and some exclusives, they could have done a good beachhead strategy. They would have lost to the PS2 regardless, but that's unavoidable, nothing was beating that. In the 360 era it looked like they were really trying with Japan and the games and hardware started to sell. They got a lot of exclusive 3rd party titles early on like Idolmaster, DOA4, Rumble Roses, etc., 3rd party timed exclusives, and lots of multiplatform games. They also worked with lots of smaller developers and gave them favorable terms to publish on the 360. Sony blowing the PS3 launch also gave them some headwind. Whenever a big title launched the 360 was sold out for weeks and the software moved hundreds of thousands of copies, because of all this stores greatly expanded their Xbox section. Sure, it was still smaller than the competition, but you could see that the mindshare was starting to grow and people were considering it as something that's worth buying in Japan. They embraced their image of being the 'hardcore gamer' console, they were even using popular idol groups in their marketing materials to appeal to that demographic. It all fell apart around when Kinetic launched, almost immediately after that all of the big Japanese exclusives dried up. They still got the niche titles that had an audience built in, but you can't survive on those alone. My guess is Don Mattrick saw that despite all the money Microsoft was pouring into Japan they were still in a far 3rd place and decided to turn off the tap and focus 100% on the west. The momentum just disappeared after that, 360 hardware sales slowed down tremendously. The One did so poorly they might as well not have bothered launching, and the poor performance means all of the Xbox displays got smaller and smaller and mostly consisted of used 360 games. Even if Japanese devs made an Xbox port of a game, they didn't bother releasing it in Japan. The Series is doing somewhat better than that but the One did so much damage to the brand that it's like starting from scratch. If MS had a better vision of what they wanted to do with Japan then they could have carved out a loyal niche (they retreated at the worst possible time as PC gaming and streaming was starting to grow around the time of the One generation and many of those people were diehard 360 fans) and grown every generation and then who knows where we'd be today. As it is, they have to prove that they won't just give up on the region yet again, and they don't seem interested in securing any exclusive Japanese content. Right now most of their marketing efforts are sponsoring streamers to show off Game Pass, which is probably the best strategy as any mainstream success is unlikely at the moment. In the end, it all comes down to software.
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Jul 5, 2023 12:29
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There's a certain irony to MS retreating from Japan like that. The way things have gone in the West have shown that they understand that breaking into this market is going to require you to bleed. Maybe they figured that even if they won, it wouldn't be worth it, so they should focus on the more known quantity?
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Jul 5, 2023 13:23
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https://twitter.com/gosokkyu/status/1677127612160962562
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Jul 7, 2023 06:40
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So, no prison. That’s a weird Japanese form of parole basically
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Jul 7, 2023 08:32
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icantfindaname posted:So, no prison. That’s a weird Japanese form of parole basically Suspended sentences are very normal in Europe too. Imagine not having to house and feed an inmate that's very unlikely to repeat their crimes. Also they keep paying taxes and working.
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Jul 7, 2023 09:01
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Yeah commonly used for domestic violence, robbery, and similar crime that doesn't meet the system's definition of important (ie, the drug trade and nothing else). It's like they're punished but instead continue to live as normal!
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Jul 8, 2023 12:29
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MechaCrash posted:There's a certain irony to MS retreating from Japan like that. The way things have gone in the West have shown that they understand that breaking into this market is going to require you to bleed. Maybe they figured that even if they won, it wouldn't be worth it, so they should focus on the more known quantity? I feel like it just goes along with Xbox executives making a lot of hilariously bad decisions from the Kinect onwards.
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Jul 8, 2023 13:17
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hell yeah https://www.eurogamer.net/sega-of-america-workers-successfully-vote-to-form-a-union
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Jul 11, 2023 00:24
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I feel like it just goes along with Xbox executives making a lot of hilariously bad decisions from the Kinect onwards. Yeah, ironically as much as people parrot the Xbox too big myth, the Japanese Kinect launch did in fact suffer from many living spaces here being too small for an optimal setup and it absolutely bombed hard here. Even if that wasn’t a factor it had no chance though, Kinect was a social device for family and friends to play together with and the 360 was the closest thing from the family machine, they probably shouldn’t have even bothered launching it here. I assume Kinect doing well elsewhere and it being Mattrick’s primary strategy at the time was a factor in abandoning the Japanese market. Original_Z fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 00:31
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:hell yeah Those union info sonic the hedgehog TikToks ring more true every day
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Jul 11, 2023 00:35
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External Organs posted:Those union info sonic the hedgehog TikToks ring more true every day Is this the Irvine Office and the Burbank office, or just Irvine? If it's just Irvine, then the main Sonic people have not unionized 😔
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Jul 11, 2023 01:29
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Studio posted:Is this the Irvine Office and the Burbank office, or just Irvine? If it's just Irvine, then the main Sonic people have not unionized 😔 quick google search says both, according to IGN
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Jul 11, 2023 01:36
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:quick google search says both, according to IGN Yup! Confirmed with a friend too 
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Jul 11, 2023 02:04
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Apparently Sega management were trying hard to gently caress with the vote too from the Union tweets so fuckin' A.
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Jul 11, 2023 02:46
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Original_Z posted:Yeah, ironically as much as people parrot the Xbox too big myth, the Japanese Kinect launch did in fact suffer from many living spaces here being too small for an optimal setup and it absolutely bombed hard here. Even if that wasn’t a factor it had no chance though, Kinect was a social device for family and friends to play together with and the 360 was the closest thing from the family machine, they probably shouldn’t have even bothered launching it here. I assume Kinect doing well elsewhere and it being Mattrick’s primary strategy at the time was a factor in abandoning the Japanese market. I'm not surprised that trying to push poo poo no one wanted even when they were the market leader made them bomb hard in territories where they had only a tenuous grasp. They really did want that Wii money so, so bad, but it's still amazing how invested they were on the Kinect. Some executive must have had the best time of his life flailing in front of a camera.
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Jul 11, 2023 08:48
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Did the Kinect do well?
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Jul 11, 2023 10:07
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Oh yeah, the Kinect did extremely well. By the time they discontinued it they'd sold over 30 million of them (according to Microsoft) and sold over 20m by the time the One launched with it bundled in. That's about a quarter of all 360's that ended up with a Kinect, discounting the ones that were bought by hobbyists to use in robotics projects.
njsykora fucked around with this message at 10:32 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 10:30
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The Kinect did so well that Microsoft went all-in on them for the next generation, thinking that gimmick dance party games were going to be the future of home entertainment. You'd be forgiven for believing this in 2011 with the success of the Wii and Rock Band.
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Jul 11, 2023 10:32
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It wasn't just that, it was also the mistaken belief off the back of the early voice assistant rush that normal people want to talk to their consumer electronics which is where a lot of the focus was if you look back over how they talked about the XBO Kinect at reveal. Stuff like voice commands, automatic login based on facial recognition and voice chat without a headset were the big focuses. I don't even remember if they brought up any games that would use Kinect on XBO outside backwards compatible 360 games.
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Jul 11, 2023 10:40
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kinect adventures is the best selling 360 game and kinect sports and dance central sold well but no other kinect game did that well and sales of the kinect did not boost sales of other 360 games. people bought a 360 for kinect, got the Kinect Games, and then did not buy the more game-y kinect games and did not buy any other 360 games. for some reason microsoft thought that making the one entirely about the kinect would work in this context.
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Jul 11, 2023 12:20
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Not linking Cecilia D’Anastasio who broke the news but the FTC just lost their case against MS/ACTV. with the UK the only remaining hurdle the merger is pretty much a go.
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Jul 11, 2023 16:07
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The 7th Guest posted:Not linking Cecilia D’Anastasio who broke the news but the FTC just lost their case against MS/ACTV. with the UK the only remaining hurdle the merger is pretty much a go. Tom Warren through The Verge has a story up now https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/11/23779039/microsoft-activision-blizzard-ftc-trial-win
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Jul 11, 2023 16:12
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loving imbecile judges, the entire american bench is a dumpster fire.
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Jul 11, 2023 16:29
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This may be the wrong place to ask, but what the gently caress is up with all the ads I keep getting about a class action lawsuit against Valve/Steam? Is it just because they and GOG were the only digital distributors that actually got their poo poo together and don't have terrible stores?
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Jul 11, 2023 16:34
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I mean it was hard to watch the arguments presented by the FTC and think they were going to win anything. That said the hurdle to overcome in the UK is still huge, and their chance this ultimately goes through without something extremely unexpected happening seems small. I’m curious to see what the terms are if this is ultimately extended (I assume they would be heavily in favor of ATVI).
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Jul 11, 2023 16:35
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yeah its hard to blame the judges in this case. the FTC's lawyers seemed like they had literally never heard of a video game.
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Jul 11, 2023 16:42
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And the judge seemed incredibly knowledgeable about what was going on. I guess maybe it sucks that the laws are what they are but nothing about this seems to be on the judge. It’s not like the FTC has a habit of winning court cases recently. This seems like a much bigger deal. The CMA ultimately agreeing to some kind of remedy after denying the merger initially, from what I can tell, would be a most unexpected move. https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1678795990113894403?s=46&t=IW0MSOWK0Lh4VsB3wVLoOA Anno fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 17:04
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I don't think this will salvage MS's gaming woes. the more they buy... well, what happens if and when Satya Nadella is replaced and a less gaming friendly faction of MS comes to power?
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Jul 11, 2023 22:59
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StratGoatCom posted:I don't think this will salvage MS's gaming woes. the more they buy... well, what happens if and when Satya Nadella is replaced and a less gaming friendly faction of MS comes to power? The games vertical is a lot of revenue for them even if it loses a bit of focus.
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Jul 12, 2023 00:48
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Is it profitable though?
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Jul 12, 2023 00:53
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njsykora posted:Is it profitable though? If it isn't, it probably could be with some right-sizing
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Jul 12, 2023 00:55
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leper khan posted:If it isn't, it probably could be with some right-sizing I would imagine that owning King would help a LOT with that.
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Jul 12, 2023 01:15
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microsoft has utterly terrible decision making and just buying call of duty and WoW will not fix that
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Jul 12, 2023 01:19
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Phil reiterated that Gamepass and Xbox were profitable like a month ago during his Giant Bomb interview. I don't think they even need this to be back on track - things seem to be getting there anyway - but it'll certainly help, and provide the big jump into mobile gaming they've been looking for.
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Jul 12, 2023 01:19
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I'll always kind of wonder what kind of weird cool poo poo they could've made if they just took the Activision money and spent it on existing studios / spinning up new ones. But that's not really their thing I guess. Edit: sorry for the low content post, thought I was in the Xbox thread
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Jul 12, 2023 01:30
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njsykora posted:Is it profitable though? Yes, but not particularly great margins given what they put in, comparatively. Frankly rather precarious. Sooner or later, there will be a leadership or circumstances that force culling and there will be will be blood by the gallon in gaming when they get tired of sunk costs. And don't give me gamepass, that model is cracking up in movies, I don't think MS will manage it in games.
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Jul 12, 2023 01:42
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Endorph posted:microsoft has utterly terrible decision making and just buying call of duty and WoW will not fix that lmao that out of all the studios Microsoft has acquired, the only one that has been able to put out a polished and well-received game afterwards is Double Fine
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Jul 12, 2023 01:42
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External Organs posted:
I mean they're doing that, too. There's been significant hiring at a lot of their new studios over the last couple of years, new teams being formed, a combination of new IP and resurrecting older stuff. They've also done a number of publishing deals for games like AoE4, Contraband, Towerborne, ARA: History Untold...probably some stuff I'm missing. They've put a lot of money into expanding what they have, but obviously it's always fastest to expand by buying new stuff, too. Pirate Jet posted:lmao that out of all the studios Microsoft has acquired, the only one that has been able to put out a polished and well-received game afterwards is Double Fine No one ever remembers that Obsidian put out two polished and very well received games last year. Anno fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Jul 12, 2023 |
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Jul 12, 2023 01:44
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Pirate Jet posted:lmao that out of all the studios Microsoft has acquired, the only one that has been able to put out a polished and well-received game afterwards is Double Fine Obsidian, OP.
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Jul 12, 2023 01:45
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Pirate Jet posted:lmao that out of all the studios Microsoft has acquired, the only one that has been able to put out a polished and well-received game afterwards is Double Fine People still play Minecraft. But afterwards...hmm. Does Hi-fi Rush count? Edit: oh yeah. Sea of Thieves. Grounded. Pentiment.
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Jul 12, 2023 01:45
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