TGS: Blue Dragon hits Japan this holiday

WOW, Blue Dragon bundle? Japan is so spoiled!

Basically, Microsoft are giving the game away for free. Will the Sonic The Hedgehog strategy work? If Microsoft don't start shifting units in Japan then they obviously have a problem that goes far beyond not having games the Japanese like.

I hate teh Japanese (not really)...I want that game, so bad :(.

*the (was not an attempt to be "l337," was just tired...).

They better say that there is a Blue Dragon 2 in development, ot japanese gamers might just play Blue Dragon, beat it, and then sell their 360 to go get a PS3.

Look at it this way. There isn't a sufficient installed base to make money on a high budget Xbox 360 game in Japan yet. But if the game will move consoles it has far greater value as a bundle item.

If the budget of the game is, say, $15 million, and Microsoft is effectively giving it away to stimulate hardware sales, that expenditure is minor compared to the other cost of developing and launching the Xbox 360. It was considered completely normal when the SNES included Super Mario World, even though the game would have been a huge hit sold separately.

Meanwhile, the game should do very well in the West and stimulate sales here as well. Almost certainly enough to make the original production and localizations profitable.

The day Blue Dragon and the bundle hits Japanese store will be the real Japanese launch of the Xbox 360. Everything before then was just catering to a niche market. Perhaps by next spring they'll need to start shipping more machines into Japan after overstocking the original pseudo-launch.

you only live thrice!

Now if Japan doesn't buy games for the X360 it's not because of not having games that appeal for them.

Blue Dragon
Gundam
Tokyo Extreme Racer
and tons of other Japanese Turn-based/Dynasty Warrior style games.

Facts will be shown in a couple of months if Japan just doesn't like Microsoft or Western video game companies.

A continued misunderstanding of the Japanese market going on here... and some of you guys are going to be pretty disappointed when this game doesn't even put a dent in Xbox 360 sales there. And there will be a lot more Japan-bashing afterwards, and comments to the effect that this is "proof" of Japanese racism and xenophobia about American products.

The PS2 sells in Japan not because of one game. What one game do people there still buy it for? No, it sells because it has *thousands* of games available for it (way more in Japan than here), in all genres, that appeal to all niches of gamers.

No console sells in Japan because of one game. The closest you could come to saying that would be the DS with Brain Age, but I'd venture to say that in the absence of Nintendogs, NSMB, Mario Kart, the DS Lite redesign, price, and several other factors, DS sales would be nowhere near what they are now. If Nintendo had put out Brain Age and gotten everything else wrong, nobody would have even bothered to notice.

MS has gotten everything else wrong with the Xbox 360. They're not going to pull it out with one game from the producer of Final Fantasy, however good it is (and I haven't seen any reviews yet, so for all anyone knows it could be crap. The Japanese don't buy crap games just because they come from the producer of Final Fantasy).

I don't really see how they're ever going to fix the 360 there, in all honesty. The design of the system is what it is. The game library is what it is. The marketing is what it is. All these things can eventually be fixed, but all these things were planned years in advance and it takes time to change them in mid-stream - time MS doesn't have. The system's reputation is already pretty much set there, and once that happens, there's not a whole lot you can do.

Jeff -

The problem is, thousands of games don't just magically materialize on a system. This is the whole chicken vs egg argument. Which comes first, the mass variety of software titles or the hardware sales?

The PS2 wasn't a whole lot of awesome and didn't really start moving units until after a price drop and Final Fantasy X released, after which the monthly sales rates doubled and we started to see all those titles start their development cycles.

Developers didn't just say, "I really like developing on the PS2, lets create a small, niche market game to attract people to buy the unit." No, they saw a lot of people buying the PS2 for FFX and decided that they could safely put their niche title on it. Without the big system mover, the thousands of other titles won't exist.

Blue Dragon could very well be that system mover that makes all those niche titles worth developing.

I agree with LaughingTarget. While Jeff makes some good points, I do believe one game can move a system.

I wonder how many PS1 systems were sold after FF7 was released. I would have to imagine alot. I know I bought the system for FF7, and that was the only game I had for the PS1 for a while. I probably would have never bought the PS1 in all honesty if Square didn't migrate to the Sony system. Also I remember the PS1 not being a bargain. It was the first console I bought that didn't feature an included game and you had to purchase a memory card if you wanted to save your game. I distinctly remember my youthful outrage.

I currently don't have a 360 and if Blue Dragon is any good it might be a system seller for me. I don't think I'm the exception. I have to believe there are others you think like me.

Dudes.. this thing will bomb if it's likes every other rpg then it'll definitely bomb..
no one in their right mind would buy another system just to play one rpg that's just like all the other rpgs.. there's thousands of rpgs in japan... sure they may get a couple of sales, but the marketing of the 360 in japan is dogs balls.. microsoft just need to sack all those people and hire some people from nintendo.. j/k....

Nobody expects one game to make the Xbox 360 an overnight sensation in Japan but there is the need for an exclusive title that speaks to that market to break the ice.

Japanese consumers, in fact, have shown a tendency to buy machines for a single game. Then sell the machine off when they've played it to their satisfaction. This happened frequently on the N64. A must-play franchise entry, like Star Fox 64, would appear and hardware sales would shoot up for a while and then fade as the title reached saturation. Then, not long after, the stores that dealt in used hardware would be afloat in N64s.

This was a bit ugly for Nintendo in the early days of the N64 since it meant a great disparity between units sold and functional installed base. Nintendo did great on their franchise hits but it was discouraging to third parties that so many people only wanted the machine for as long as it took to play a particular game, even if it meant they made repeated purchases and sales of used N64s.

The consumer attitude seemed to be that they weren't confident in more must-play games showing up and would rather recoup some of their investment than hold on to the hardware, especially since most of their gaming was becoming dominated by the PS1. This mindset made sense if you realy believed there may never be another worthy game on the machine and were willing to pay extra for that one title you just had to play. (The severely slow rate of releases early in the N64's life may have contributed to this.)

But the effect became far less pronounced as time marched on because with each hit game more of those consumers would see enough in the N64 library to decide to keep the machine.

It's entirely possible that there will be very good sales of the Blue Dragon - Core System bundle for $290 (adding in a memory unit) and then a couple months later a flood of those systems into the used console market as people finish the game and decide that is all the 360 has to offer them. Once again, there may be a good sized contingent that is willing to pay what most here would regard as a very high premium for one game but isn't willing to keep the machine around in anticipation of more games with high desirability, preferring instead to recover some of the cost. One game, no matter how good, will not make a console a success.

It is the job of Microsoft to convince the market there that the hit game is only the first of many. It doesn't have to be a huge flow, just enough to make the machine attrctive enough to buy and keep. It's hard work but that can be said for anything worth pursuing. There is no point where you can look at your platform's library and say it's good enough and nothing more is needed. Not unless you've sold so much hardware as to exceed the market for software or your hardware still has some price reductions remaining in its life.

The payoff is not just Japan but offering us in the West a better software selection, too.

Jeff, you might also want to recall that Nintendogs preceeded most of those other items you note, yet Nintendo very proudly touted it as selling the DS in large numbers to consumers who'd previously had no interest in the DS. Woody Allen once wrote, "90% of success is showing up." There are no prizes for those who just stay home and don't even try. As I mentioned above, the precedent MS should seek here is the N64 rather than Playstations past. For all its difficulties the N64 was ultimately a net positivve for Nintendo. The issues Nintendo encountered have more to teach Microsoft than the PS2.

Is the Xbox 360 going to suddenly enjoy a skyrocket rise to nation-wide popularity? Of course not. Nobody rational, including Microsoft, is making such claims. But can the platform grow to be a viable target for an increasing number of developers and publishers who cater solely to their native market? Definitely. Sponsoring the development of high profile titles that will also sell well in the West drives hardware sales and creates more opportunity for those small developers. Just reaching a user base of 3 million would be a major encouragement. The numbers would be sufficient for a reasonably budget project to make money. It is a small base compared to other platforms but there can be advantages to being a big fish in a small pond. You can reach a much higher portion of the user base if you aren't just one of 100 similar games in the same genre on the shelf.

At first, I should mention I'm Japanese "Gamer" Guy.

XBOX Core System and Blue Dragon for less than 30,000yen. That's great. It's WAY cheaper than before.

However, we have Wii at that time. They must compete with this.
Wait, Core System? No HDD? We need memory pack (3,200yen) to play online?

and in terms of software...

> Blue Dragon

It SHOULD be good game. (but nobody knows)

> Gundam

All Gundam games are not created equal.
Actually there are only few good Gundom games among a lot of lot of Gundam games. So being Gundam game dosen't mean being good game.

> Tokyo Extreme Racer

I'm sorry, I don't know this game. Racing game is no longer killer games in Japan. Racing, Crashing, Destroying, Shooting... No thanks, sorry.

> and tons of other Japanese Turn-based/Dynasty Warrior style games.

For example, there are only few people who said "N3 is good game" around me. Once again, being in that kind of category dosen't mean being good game.

I think some people will buy Bundle Package but it dosen't change large picture in Japanese market.

(Actually, who will buy the system of sales record with LESS THAN 1000 A WEEK? very doubtful.)

The new Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy as well as games from Nippin Ichi and Level 5 are heading to PS3.

'Game over man, game over..'