Xbox Live?.....

[hanasims]

I have been playing the hell out of Xbox live here in the States. Has anyone played any Xbox games over the internet in Japan? Is it popular?

[Taro Toporific]

I have been playing the hell out of Xbox live here in the States. Has anyone played any Xbox games over the internet in Japan? Is it popular?

Kind of hard to play Xbox Live in Japan since nobody owns one. If I remember the Nikkei Shimbun correctly, Japanese Xbox sales for the month of Sept. was fewer than 800 units. :P

[Caustic Saint]

Can you even buy the Xbox Live starter kit in Japan? In theory I guess if you brought your Xbox and Live kit to Japan you could get online with it easily enough. I did pretty much the same thing with my PS2 in Korea last year. Played Socom against people in the US with no problems.

[Taro Toporific]

Can you even buy the Xbox Live starter kit in Japan?

Xbox price set to drop in Japan once more
gamesindustry.biz, UK - 29 Oct
... At present, the Xbox is priced at 24,800 Yen in Japan, about the same price
as Sony's PlayStation 2. ...the new price point on November 20, alongside a new Xbox bundle for Project Gotham Racing 2 which will feature a console, a DVD playback kit, two months free on Xbox Live and copies of PGR2 and Halo for 19,800 Yen ....

[Big Booger]

I might pick one up at the price.

They should have started out selling them at that price.. Good bye Sony.
hehehe

[kotatsuneko]

offline retro is way better ^^

open, chip, replace hd, dvd drive if you like, upgrade ram, close, fill up hd with roms

call mates get beer/smoky

play your mispent youth/adult hood on real arcade games rather than wait for fmv to end...

wake up the morning after fix food, catch up on some 8/16 bit rpgs... ; #

lookin forward to the square/enix deal tho.. the frog knight's shield needs dusting off for sure...

[American Oyaji]

I've played CAPCOM vs. SNK 2 vs Japanese players

[kotatsuneko]

how bout this? dunno if ya can netlink it, but imagine some us vs middle east teams on this?:

http://www.videogamerx.net/bbs/view.php?id=vx01&no=2884

scroll down a bit for the ulTimAte boss fight ^^

theres also gonna be an unlockable muti mode...

[Caustic Saint]

how bout this? dunno if ya can netlink it, but imagine some us vs middle east teams on this?:

http://www.videogamerx.net/bbs/view.php?id=vx01&no=2884

scroll down a bit for the ulTimAte boss fight ^^

I wouldn't recommend firing off that RPG at that range.

[yellowlightman]

http://www.video-fenky.com just posted a bit about that game kinda interesting.

It'll do great with the redneck wal mart crowd I'm sure.

[Big Booger]

http://www.video-fenky.com just posted a bit about that game kinda interesting.

It'll do great with the redneck wal mart crowd I'm sure.

I'm sure it will. Any kind of hunting or killing game will do.

[Caustic Saint]

Microsoft Rolls Out Xbox Live in Wired Korea

South Korea is only the second Asian nation after Japan where Microsoft has launched its Xbox Live online gaming service.

I wonder how well it'll sell here in the land where Starcraft is king, and online gaming is more of a social "go to the PC Bang with all your friends for 7 hours of Starcraft and Counterstrike" thing. Play by yourself and veg out at home isn't that common here.

I don't think any of my students (out of 95 6th-8th graders) even own an Xbox. A couple may have PS2s and there may be a lone Gamecube among them. Consoles just aren't seen as viable gaming solutions here, not when PC Bangs are everywhere and most everybody has a PC at home.

I'm not sure what the Xbox is selling for here. I've seen a few games that I'd like to try out, but until the system drops below $100 I won't consider picking one up.

[Caustic Saint]

Enjoy Xbox Further!

Microsoft announced a new Enjoy Xbox Further Campaign in Japan, between November 15 to December 20, Xbox owners can enter a lucky draw to receive one of the 2000 speically made "X" shape decoration for your Xbox console. There are 6 different designs in total, each is designed by popular artists and graphic designers in Japan.

Hey! That's one for every Xbox sold in Japan so far. Everybody wins!

[Taro Toporific]

Enjoy Xbox Further!
[url]http://www.the-magicbox.com/Oct03/ms22.jpg][/url]

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /Oct03/ms22.jpg on this server.

[Caustic Saint]

Enjoy Xbox Further!
[url]http://www.the-magicbox.com/Oct03/ms22.jpg][/url]

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /Oct03/ms22.jpg on this server.

Grrr. It worked for me last night, but probably just because the image was still in my cache. Now that I've got my own space I need to get in the habit of putting images there instead of just linking to them.

Anyways, that third one is odd enough to be cool, but what's up with the first one? Is camo the height of design in Japan now or something?

[Taro Toporific]

Microsoft Rolls Out Xbox Live in Wired Korea

I'm not sure what the Xbox is selling for here. I've seen a few games that I'd like to try out, but until the system drops below $100 I won't consider picking one up.

Gettin' closer to $100

Microsoft to cut price of Xbox by 8,000 yen - TOKYO
Kyodo Press Nov. 11 (22 :41)

Microsoft to slash Japan Xbox price - ReutersTue 11 November, 2003 10:32
TOKYO (Reuters)- Microsoft Corp says it will cut the price of its Xbox game console by a third in Japan, undercutting rival Sony Corp's recently reduced PlayStation 2 price ahead of the holiday shopping season.
Microsoft will cut the Xbox price to 16,800 yen (93 pounds {$154.669 USD}) from 24,800 yen on November 20, a week after Sony reduces the price of its PlayStation 2 (PS2) game machine by roughly 20 percent to 19,800 yen.

[Caustic Saint]

Still not low enough. $100, then I'll get one.

Get me an Xbox deal like that and I'll grab one. Then again, there's the matter of finding 4 games I'd want to play....

[American Oyaji]

Don't know about Japan, but here in the U.S. there are TONS of games for xbox.

[Caustic Saint]

Don't know about Japan, but here in the U.S. there are TONS of games for xbox.

But how many are worth spending $50 on? I've already got a PS2, so it's only the exclusive content I'd be interested in.

I've heard good stuff about Crimson Skies, MechAssault and a few others, but not enough to push me to buy the system. I would like to try out Steel Battalion, just to play with that controller.



It's getting hard to find though, unless you want to go spend $300 on ebay.

I've seen copies of it available at the electronics market in Seoul. Maybe I should start hawking them on ebay myself?

[Caustic Saint]

Live! or on life support?

From The Magic Box:

Here are the latest hardware sales in Japan for the week of Nov 11 - 17, the sales of PlayStation 2 has increased by more than twice after the price dropped to 19,800 yen on Nov 13.

1. PlayStation 2 - 68,135 units
2. GameBoy Advance SP - 23,418 units
3. GameCube - 19,319 units
4. GameBoy Advance - 2,842 units
5. Xbox - 432 units
6. PSone - 321 units
7. WonderSwan Crystal - 147 units

You know, if you're only outselling an 8 year old console by 111 units, that should tell you something.

Sony and MS are both cutting console prices in South Korea tomorrow. Sony by 24,800 won (to approx. $210) for the PS2 and MS by 50,300 won (to approx. $170) for the Xbox. And Sony will still outsell MS by leaps and bounds.

[American Oyaji]

The problem with Xbox in Japan is the screwed up marketing and the way that store managers in Japan shunned it. Put it in odd places away from the video game sections. It actually was sabotaged in many respects.
The name doesnt help either. I could have told them that.

My Xbox Live games are:
Rainbow Six 3
Ghost Recon: Island Thunder
Crimson Skies
Capcom vs. SNK 2
Mech Assault
Unreal Championship
Midnight Club 2 (racing game from the folks that made Grand Theft Auto)
Phantasy Star Online
Deer Hunt (haven't played the last 2 yet. Picked them up for the heck of it.)

Other game are:
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003
Dead or ALive 3
Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball
Enter the Matrix
Shenmue 2
Halo (THIS GAME ROCKS SO HARD THAT M$ HASN'T DROPPED IT'S PRICE LIKE OTHER BEST SELLERS)
Soul Calibur (Can you say "Spawn")
Robotech: Battlecry
Kung Fu Chaos (This one is wacky but lots of fun)

The next games I'll be getting are:
Grand Theft Auto double pack: Includes GTA III and Vice City
True Crime: Streets of L.A.
Counterstrike
Prince of Persia

As much as I detest Microsoft, I've got to say the Xbox is a great system.
Some game have their own soundtracks which I don't like so I can use my OWN music by burning it to the disk drive of the xbox.

[Caustic Saint]

The problem with Xbox in Japan is the screwed up marketing and the way that store managers in Japan shunned it. Put it in odd places away from the video game sections. It actually was sabotaged in many respects.
The name doesnt help either. I could have told them that.

As much as I detest Microsoft, I've got to say the Xbox is a great system.
Some game have their own soundtracks which I don't like so I can use my OWN music by burning it to the disk drive of the xbox.

What was bad about the name with regards to selling it in Japan? I'd heard that it was poorly marketed - though I did see an incredibly sweet in-store display at Azo Bit City in Akihabara this spring for Steel Battalion. Huge mech on a 1.5m x 1.5m display stand with stuff strewn all around it. Of course, that was Capcom's doing, not MS'.

Live seems like the ideal console service from everything I've heard about it. Forcing a consistent approach among developers and running the servers themselves has let them make the service how it needs to be and it's kept the experience solid across all the games that use it.

I've seen some games that I'd like to try out, but none that've pushed me to buy a system for myself. Like I said earlier, $100 and I'm there.

[Taro Toporific]

What was bad about the name with regards to selling it in Japan?

"X", called batsu in Japanese, means bad. The neon green on the packaging denotes radiation. Both together makes it a hard sell in Japan. I would assume that the "X" aversion is the same in Korea, isn't it? Table and charts in Japan use "O" (maru) for good/ok and "X" (batsu ) for bad/NG/wrong.

[American Oyaji]

Yeah,
In Japan its Batsu Box. (no good box)
plus the thing is honking huge with NO cuteness factor that the japanese like.

Hey Taro. Nice avatar. where you get it?

[Caustic Saint]

What was bad about the name with regards to selling it in Japan?

"X", called batsu in Japanese, means bad. The neon green on the packaging denotes radiation. Both together makes it a hard sell in Japan. I would assume that the "X" aversion is the same in Korea, isn't it? Table and charts in Japan use "O" (maru) for good/ok and "X" (batsu ) for bad/NG/wrong.

I didn't know about all the symbolism (green, etc.), or that the "X" would be taken in cultural context. I guess I'm used to people in America who have to be clubbed over the head with any sort of imagery to get a point across. The "X" and "O" symbols are used the same way here (and it confuses my students when I use "checks" for good), but I'm not sure about the impact the "X" has on product sales.

I agree with AO as well - it's too freaking big, as poiinted out in [Penny Arcade and other reliable news sources. Last year rumors started going around about a redesigned system that would be smaller and cheaper, but instead they've just been cutting the price (slowly) on the original "monolith" design. Last I heard from the rumor mill was that the mini-X would be released when the "X-box Next" (no, I didn't make that up) comes out.

I wonder how they'll handle backwards compatability between Box 1 and Box 2 when it looks like they're changing CPU and GPU vendors for the next system.

As much as size & cuteness matter in Japan, it hasn't helped the Gamecube that much. The price cuts have had a better effect on sales than the size of the handle on the back.

[Taro Toporific]

What was bad about the name with regards to selling it in Japan?

.. I would assume that the "X" aversion is the same in Korea, isn't it?

The "X" and "O" symbols are used the same way here (and it confuses my students when I use "checks" for good.

In the DoCoMo FOMA keitai manual that I'm supposed to be rewriting (instead of jackin' off on the FG), there's dozens of charts full of meaningless-in-English maru and batsu. My exhalted high-tech job today is to "translate" maru and batsu into checkmarks, long dashes, N and Y, or other English forms of expression. For this "work," I'm paid a gazillion yen a year. Sheesh.

Hey Taro. Nice avatar. where you get it?

"IT'S A TRAP!"

It's from "Clone Wars" Chapter 5. He's one of the "Mon Calamari"....no doubt Akbar in his youth long before he became Admiral Akbar from the orginal Star Wars movie. :P

[American Oyaji]

Has Microsoft officially put it in their PLATINUM GAMES series?

[Caustic Saint]

Has Microsoft officially put it in their PLATINUM GAMES series?

Nope. The PH titles sell for $19.99 and MS has only cut the price of Halo to $29.99.

MS' Halo page

And what's up with their holiday "offer?" $179 for the system two games (this time around it's Clone Wars and Tetris Worlds) and a two-month trial to Live - headset not included. Could they have picked lamer games to toss in the box? And isn't the headset part of what makes Live so good?

[Taro Toporific]

Don't know about Japan, but here in the U.S. there are TONS of games for xbox.

Tons of games the Japanese won't play...

[b]Tokyo Game Show survey results: RPGs, yes] TGS survey paints bleak picture for Microsoft, action games, and software developers trying to break into the Japanese market.
gamespot.com / Nov 22 / TOKYO--CESA has released the results of its survey from this year's Tokyo Game Show. CESA (Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association)...survey results are available for download at the cesa.or.jp site.
...The survey also offered insight into software preferences. The heavy preference for RPGs is eye-opening: 39 percent of respondents identified it as their favorite genre. This is far ahead of every other genre: strategy gaming, the second most popular choice, tallied only 7 percent of the votes. Meanwhile, first person shooters and LAN games received scores under 1 percent.
Figures like these make Japan's game market look like a tough nut to crack for overseas software developers. The statistics for ownership of overseas games are even more discouraging: The percentage of respondents currently own non-Japanese software? Just over 1 percent. And only 4 percent expressed interest in buying such software in the future.

[Neo-Rio]

I also heard that Jpaanese gamers dislike games that attempt to portray real life as well. So anything like a shooter that looks real is kinda out.

Anything animated, fantasy, storyline, cute character.... heck if you could get Quake 3 and redesign it so that all the characters look like mario and friends, and have them throw dodgeballs around mushroom land.... maybe that will sell.