By Nelson Schneider - 09/25/14 at 01:39 PM CT
On September 3, the XBONE launched in Japan, nearly a year after launching in the West. Of course, the fact that Microsoft delayed the release of their new console in the Land of the Rising Sun makes little difference, as Japanese gamers have historically cared very little about the “too Western” Dudebro games that have choked the Xbox library since the original Xbox began ruining things in the 6th Generation.
The Xbox 360 was an unequivocal disaster in Japan, barely moving any consoles and moving so few copies of hot-in-the-West games that there’s no way anyone made a profit off localization efforts. With the small-scale Japanese XBONE launch parties looking more like modern art installations of a World Without Humans, it appears that nothing will be changing any time soon.
The chasm between Eastern and Western developers is only growing deeper, as the West adopts the Hollywood model of remaking popular things with increasingly bigger budgets, while Japan continues to do its own thing and cater to hyper-niches of Akihabara-dwelling sexual deviants. Of course, Japan’s migration away from consoles toward an all-consuming obsession with handhelds and mobile phones doesn’t help. With a console market packed with too many undifferentiated choices – to the point that even home-grown executives can’t understand why their products are selling – a foreign interloper like Microsoft doesn’t have a chance, especially when their product isn’t a handheld or a phone.
Japan used to be the Font of All Knowledge, whence all great videogames bubbled forth. That has not been the case since the start of the 7th Generation, so Microsoft will likely shrug off this snub and continue business as usual. But it begs the question: Why did Microsoft even bother to release the XBONE in Japan at all? Looking at domestic and foreign release dates for games, the current environment is seeing many, MANY Western games never making it to Japan and vice versa. What is the point in releasing a console in a territory where a significant percentage of its games will never be released (or, if they are released, will sell literally hundreds of copies)?
Then there’s the fact that Microsoft does indeed have a mobile phone platform. Between Windows and Windows Phone, Microsoft has all of the platforms it needs to sell games, both domestically and abroad. The XBONE, like its forebears, is simply a redundant 5th leg on Microsoft’s table – a 5th leg with termites.
