The Real Reasons Why The Xbox Continues To Fail In Japan – Forbes
A customer (R) holds a box containing Microsoft’s video game console “Xbox One” next to a campaign … [+]
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In recent months, there have been attempts across the media to get to the bottom of why the Xbox brand has never really succeeded in Japan. It’s clear that there is a cultural disconnect concerning this topic but no-one seems to want to really understand what is happening here.
You would have thought that the first port of call would have been to talk to people in the Japanese games industry but, weirdly, that seems to have been overlooked.
That aside, the Xbox brand has never managed to gain any real traction with Japanese developers and the gaming public over the years. This is not not because people here in Japan inherently hate Microsoft or even the Xbox, which is what some quarters of the internet seem to think. No, it is more about how Microsoft has approached gaming in Japan and its unwillingness to adapt to the needs of a unique market.
Put simply, there have been two main issues that have undermined Microsoft’s strategy with the Xbox in Japan.
Japan Is Very Resilient To Disruptive Business Practices
On the whole, disruptive business practices don’t go down well in Japan. Business is more formalized and regulated than in the Europe or U.S. and foreign companies have to learn to work within this framework or fail. Good examples of this are companies such as Apple, that have worked very hard over the years to build its brand up sympathetically within the expectations of the Japanese market.
This is also true for the gaming industry, which has a long history and specific culture of its own in Japan. Simply coming in and offering to disrupt that market and make lots of money is not the right kind of message here, especially when said Japanese companies are already making money.
Microsoft should have gone in and been more respectful to the cultural framework of gaming in Japan and offered a way to add to it rather than disrupt and replace it outright.
Gaming In Japan Is Closer To Toys Than Movies
This is not so much a Microsoft thing but a U.S. cultural thing. In that, movies are a hugely dominant cultural force in the U.S. and this often results in Western games trying to emulate movies, which is no bad thing on its own.
However, in Japan games are historically closer to toys and their appeal is more about the functionality they offer rather than any kind of movie-based narrative delivery.
There are, of course, exceptions to this but generally speaking, gaming in Japan is more about what the player can do rather than what they will just passively sit through.
Bringing Japanese developers onboard means you have to engage with them on a functional level and acknowledging the rich history gaming has in Japan.
The closest Microsoft got to cracking the Japanese market was with the Xbox 360, as it had a more solid lineup of games by major Japanese developers. However, the 360 still fell foul of the two main issues above.
Despite all this, I still think the Xbox could find its place in Japan and even thrive, but Microsoft needs to adapt to the requirements of the gaming culture and market here.
Coming to the reductive conclusion that Xbox hardware is too big for Japanese households as the main cause of concern, is not even close to accurate or even helpful.
There’s a lot more going on here in a cultural sense and Microsoft still needs to tune into that if it really wants to succeed in Japan.
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and do toy reviews over at hobbylink.tv.
Read my Forbes blog here.
