At least, not in Japan. We knew the Xbox 360 wasn’t selling in Japan. What’s worse is that the PS2 and the Gamecube are outselling it. None of the games for the Xbox 360 have even made the top ten holiday sales for Japan. The Xbox 360 is doing so poorly in Japan that I have to wonder if Microsoft should have bothered to make a showing in Japan at all.
Sure, the Japanese market is huge, but it is also Sony’s playground. Coming to market in Japan with only 9 games available for your system is tantamount to professional suicide when there are literally thousands of titles available for the PS2 and the gamecube over there. Developers in Japan nearly flood the market with titles to see what sells well there, then they ship what actually makes money to the US. That’s how they test market for North America, because if it will sell like wildfire in Japan, it will sell like wildfire everywhere.
Microsoft should have known this before they went to market with the Xbox 360 and accounted for that fact by having more than a meager pile of games for their system. Microsoft, whoever made that stupid decision needs to be fired. They just lost you the second largest video game market in the world.
In other news, the PS3 IS going to be all that.
