Why the XBOX failed in Japan (Eurogamer Article)

[Addicted]

Interesting Eurogamer article about why the XBOX failed in Japan:

http://www.eurogamer.net/...-why-xbox-failed-in-japan

"Microsoft's hardware technicians wrapped plastic around those features and came up with the original Xbox controller design, codenamed Duke. Testing showed it didn't cause much of, if any, muscle stress in the hand."

“We were told the controller had to have the weight of water,” Fries recalls.

[The Metamorphosing Leon]

Good lord tl;dr

I tried, I really did.

[Izret101]

I like the simple explanation of X having negative connotations in Japan.
So people didn't want to buy a Badbox or Failurebox

I guess it would have really been BadboBad.

True or not it is short and to the point. I like it.

[bombatomba]

Ray Barnholdt in his excellent fanzine, Scroll, did a similar article call "The Unknown Xbox."  While I recommend you purchase it ($15 print, $5 pdf), you can also read a transcription here.  The article focuses, like most of the articles found in Scroll, on the Japanese-internal view of the system that most people outside of game journalists and Japanese gamers themselves don't know about.  Very interesting read.

Also, buy issues of Scroll.  This magazine is great and I really want Ray to keep writing.

[RetroRage]

Psh, just proves to me Japan's blatant anti-America attitude.

Chimpokumon.

[Izret101]

You know nothing Roundeye!
(I swear that is a racial slur)

[bombatomba]

You know nothing Roundeye!
(I swear that is a racial slur)

Well it was in Bloodsport...

[Crabmaster2000]

Psh, just proves to me Japan's blatant anti-America attitude.

Chimpokumon.

Some of us have that same attitude up here in Canada, XBOX SUCKS!!!!

[SirPsycho]

Don't many Japanese retailers that carry Xbox games (not many of them) keep them in sections called Kuso-ge (crap games)?

[Razor Knuckles]

They do have a 'Junk section' at their hard off thrift stores. Their game selection in the junk section is pretty sweet to me.

[Zagnorch]

That article is fairly long, but I found it fairly fascinating.

It had me flashing back my college marketing courses, and the various case studies I read of U.S. companies failing to properly study the cultures & attitudes of the various international markets they were trying to enter, with less than desirable outcomes.

[wildbil52]

Eurogamer is great, even if it's a little elitist sometimes.  I think the cultural divide was one of the biggest parts.  The Japanese market tends to be more xenophobic than most.

[Sirgin]

Great article.

Remarkable how much difference a decade makes. While at the start of the PS2/Dreamcast era the Japanese developers were still king of the hill, one decade later they've largely regressed to developing for their home market. I bet the Japanese today wouldn't turn up their noses at the Americans/Europeans as they did back then.