The XBox 360 Poised For Japan

I really don’t know about the 360’s chances in Japan. Before today in fact, I thought they were pretty much guaranteed to have a subpar performance in the world’s most gadgety nation. Microsoft, despite claims that Japan was a target market, has done very little right in appealing to gamers there.

They’ve released a launch list completely void of the most popular type of game (RPG), they’ve completely ignored their inclusion in Zero Hour contests (come on, even Europeans got to go to that one), and given them the fewest backwards compatible games out of any of the markets.

On top of that they delay a bunch of popular games including, I’m very sad to report, the highly anticipated Dead or Alive 4. Instead of the game being made available at launch (December 10th), it has now been pushed back a full week to the 17th meaning that the launch list in the land of the rising sun consists of a whopping six titles. Yes…six.

Now everyone’s got their knickers in a bunch because the Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association has released the results of a poll conducted with Japanese gamers. Apparently the XBox 360 beat out the Nintendo Revolution on the interest scale at the Tokyo Game Show this year. Which would be surprising considering that Japan is a Nintendo fortress of impenetrable doom for Microsoft, save for a few key things. One is that this poll was conducted before much information was available on the Revolution itself. The 360 had demo units playable at the show, but the Revolution experience focussed almost entirely on the weird looking new controller. It would be like asking people whether they wanted a cookie or an entire bakery. Also, at that time, the 360 was still amazingly amazing and none of the above faults were known to gamers. I bet if you asked the Japanese now, knowing what they know, that the Revolution would be steamrolling the 360 into the ground.

But look! Just to distract them, Microsoft has appealed to the other Japanese love: figurines. They’ve planted massive XBox 360 models in Sapporo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka. These monumental installations look like your XBox on growth hormones, measuring 12′ tall and playing game trailers on 65″ screens. They’ll be in place until one week after the launch in Japan, just in case anyone wants to book a flight and see.