14 DAY TRIAL // The Xbox 360 may have most of North America nice and cozy in its back pocket, but the console isn't doing so well in Japan. Up against local competitors like Sony and Nintendo, Microsoft and its gaming gadget are the outsiders, and Japan doesn't play so well with the West. As such, on a great market as far as consoles and video games go, Microsoft's having a hard time creating a proper foothold. If 2008 proved to be a rather good year for the company, with exclusive titles like Tales of Vesperia, their lucky streak pretty much ended in 2009.
The first months of the year weren't all that bad, as Shoko Nakagawa, a very popular Japanese idol, became an Xbox 360 user and inspired many of her fans to become her Xbox Live pals, the remainder of the year proved to be a real letdown.
More and more Xbox 360 titles, or their spinoffs at least, slowly started to be released on the PlayStation 3 as well, and the Xbox began losing traction, and slide out of control. Another thing that caused Microsoft's console to lose face and fans is the infamous Red Ring of Death, as hardware problems became more and more frequent.
While it took a while for Japanese gamers to take notice of the hardware failures, local retailers picked up on this almost immediately, and quickly started to display signs that warned customers that they would no longer buy Xbox 360s manufactured before 2007, while others stopped buying them back completely.
A real blow below the belt was given to the 360 by one Japanese retailer that markets the Wii and PlayStation 3 with a special “Great Christmas Present” sticker, but didn't do the same for the RRoD victim. As the year came to an end, one of Japan's major retailers, Yodobashi Camera, stopped granting the console extended warranties, which was made available to all other products.
But that doesn't mean the Xbox 360 is dead and that Microsoft has abandoned the Eastern market. As an interesting turn of events, first person shooters have started to grow more and more popular in Japan, and Modern Warfare 2 has helped the console float just above drowning level. As for a final ace up its sleeve, the company’s motion sensing Project Natal is a well received concept in Japan, and it might prove to be exactly what the console needs to get back in the fight.