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Sony Crushes Microsoft on the Japanese Market

No big news there!

By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor

13th of December 2006, 13:31 GMT

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The Japanese console market proves yet again to be an unconquerable territory for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console. Although the Redmond Company launched its next generation console
almost a year before Sony, in Japan, the Xbox 360 was outsold by PlayStation 2.

Darren Huston, president and chief executive officer of Microsoft's Japan unit, Microsoft Co. Ltd., commented at the time that the lack of success of the Xbox 360 was correlated with the superficial offerings of the Japanese specific content.

Following that, the Redmond Company introduced a new element into its strategy: the Blue Dragon game. The fact that Blue Dragon was created by the Mistwalker, the studio of Hironobu Sakaguchi who participated in the creation of Final Fantasy, is the first step taken by Microsoft towards shaking off the role of dismal console seller on the Japanese market. Because of Blue Dragon, people actually formed queues in Japan for acquiring an Xbox 360 game.

But this is far from enough and as Microsoft was applauding reaching the 10 million sold Xbox 360 items worldwide, the console was overtaken by Sony, after just the first month of sale for PlayStation 3. While Microsoft didn't even manage to sell over 180,000 units of Xbox 360 in a whole year, PS 3 has already taken the lead with over 10,000 sold units.

Microsoft has not yet managed to leave a dent in Sony's dominance on the Japanese market, but the key to this is providing additional Japanese specific content. Although Japan still proves reluctant in what adopting the Xbox 360 is concerned, the rest of the world has had little problem embracing the console and the recently launched "Gears of War" is mirroring the success of Halo.


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