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I was originally going to write an editorial laughing at Sony for naming the controller for the PS3 "Sixaxis,"but something happened along the way. While RPGamer was thankfully spared from this phenomenon, other gaming sites were inundated with the single most uninformed explanation for the Xbox 360's failures in Japan: the Japanese won't buy anything that isn't Japanese.
Picked yourself off the floor yet? It took me a few minutes the first time I read that as well. It seems that people don't understand the idea that Japanese people have a different taste in games than we do here in the west. Now, the way the racism theorists explain it is like this: Gamers around the world like Japanese games. Gamers around the world like Japanese consoles. However, the Japanese are completely closed-minded about non-Japanese games and consoles. Therefore, they must be racist. While such a theory may make sense at first glance, it's quite ridiculous to anyone who's spent more than five minutes looking at the markets.
First off, lets' take a look at the west's supposed openness to Japan's consoles. The Xbox is the first major western game console since the Atari 7800 to hit the market (The Jaguar and CD-i were ill-conceived and never had a chance, and the 3D0 console was most commonly associated with Matsushita/Panasonic and Samsung). Therefore, there's not been a whole hell of a lot of choice in gaming. You either bought a Japanese console or you were [expletive] out of luck. Therefore, it's not exactly fair to say that we've been particularly open toward Japan. Hard to be open when not faced with a choice.
As for being open to Japanese games… Not quite. Any RPGamer who remembers the days of the NES, SNES and Genesis, when we had to wait a year or two between RPGs, knows just how open western gamers generally are to Japanese titles. While Japanese companies were making nine out of every ten console games (western companies made their name on the PC at the time), the games that did well here were the ones that best suited American tastes. Platformers, shoot-em-up/action games, sports games, fighting games, these were the genres that dominated the western game space during the generations prior to the PlayStation. It's a trend that continues today, even. While Final Fantasy has captured the mainstream consciousness with its' slick production, deep stories and constantly updated gameplay, RPGs in the west are still a niche in every sense of the word. The western game space is dominated by first-person shooters, "urban" action games, military themed 3rd person shooters, and sports games. The landscape of gaming here is nothing like in Japan. Imagine, if you will, the PlayStation 3 launches in North America on the 17th of November with only mahjong, dating sims, horse racing and train sims to choose from. Now I don't know about you, but I'm willing to bet that the rest of the west would side with me and say, "Call me when there's something interesting, I'm going to be at home playing my Xbox/X360/PS2." This is how Japanese people, who don't like first-person shooters and GTA derivatives for the most part, think when they are faced with the Xbox 360, which is dominated by first-person shooters.
And therein lies the reason the Xbox 360, like the Xbox before it, is failing in Japan. While the system is sleeker than the original Xbox (not that this is hard to do), the games are still generally suited to American tastes. Japanese people would rather play Final Fantasy than Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. It's not that Japan is xenophobic or any other nonsense like that. It's that the Xbox 360 offers almost nothing to cater to the distinct tastes of the Japanese gamer. Microsoft knows it too. Why else would they be pushing and financing Japanese development as aggressively as they are? Whether Microsoft's initiative extends beyond Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: Microsoft needs to keep delivering in order to make the 360 profitable in Japan, because in the end, it's all about the games.
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