XBOX 360 Japan launch in Tokyo on Dec 10, 2005. XBOX to date had small impact on Japan's game console market. XBOX 360 is Microsoft's new push into Japan

XBOX 360 Japan launch in Tokyo on Dec 10, 2005

Very small impact for XBOX in Japan to date

XBOX 360 Japan Launch makes a new attempt for breakthrough in Japan

by Gerhard Fasol

Microsoft launched XBOX 360 in Tokyo today Dec 10, 2005:

XBOX launch in Tokyo Shibuya on Dec 10, 2005
XBOX launch in Tokyo Shibuya on Dec 10, 2005

The original XBOX made only very small impact in Japan’s console market, which is dominated by SONY’s Playstation series and Nintendo’s Gameboy series.

As we show in our J-Games report the structure of Japan’s game software market is very different to that of the US and Europe. While in US and Europe shooting and action games are popular, in Japan role playing games in sophisticated phantasy worlds dominate. Microsoft has learnt this lesson, and has made far deeper preparations to gain cooperation by Japan’s mainstream software houses for the XBOX-360, so that we expect increasing XBOX market shares. Microsoft is also supporting the XBOX-360 introduction with a compaign including the XBOX-360 Lounge in Tokyo-Aoyama.

Sofar Microsoft does not have an equivalent for the very popular handheld DS and PSP.

Japan game market report (398 pages, pdf-file):

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