Shipping Wii to Japan: big boats, big business
by Jonti Davies 
{ Jan 2nd 2007 at 3:15AM }
Everything is made in China -- it's the world's biggest factory nation. Even Kyoto-based Nintendo's destined-for-Japan Wii consoles are imported (by Nintendo, in a weird game of Kyoto boomerang) from China. But hey, everyone's a winner, baby. According to a report by Osaka Customs, receipt of Wii consoles pushed toy imports across six regional prefectures to ¥25.3billion (US$213million) in November, which is a record high for any single month on record. Impressively, the Wii alone accounts for roughly 40% of all toy imports from China to Japan. Considering the volume of tat on sale across Japan (Doraemon plushes!), that's pretty significant. So significant, in fact, that an Osaka Customs guy confirmed to Japan's Yomiuri Shinbun that "No other video game console has had such a big effect on imports."
The question is, when will China become a proper videogame market? When will China be able to keep, and legitimately sell, a good share of the consoles it produces? And how come big boats don't sink?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ritz @ Jan 2nd 2007 4:38AM
"...how come big boats don't sink?"
MAGIC.
Saint Jouten @ Jan 2nd 2007 5:31AM
"...the volume of tat..."? Spell check! =P
Jonti @ Jan 2nd 2007 5:51AM
Dear America:
http://www.allwords.com/word-tat.html
tvjunkie @ Jan 2nd 2007 6:02AM
china will never become a proper legitimate videogame market as long as the communists still rule the country
dc @ Jan 2nd 2007 6:49AM
Well, it all has to do with how much water is pushing against you and a little scientific principle called buoyancy or floatation. So you see, if the total area of the object that makes contact with the water is large enough, the object floats. The object must make room for its own volume by pushing aside, or displacing, an equivalent (or equal) volume of liquid. The object is exerting a downward force on the water and the water is therefore exerting a upward force on the object. Of course the floating object's weight comes into play also. The solid body floats when it has displaced just enough water to equal its own original weight. This principle is called buoyancy. Buoyancy is the loss in weight an object seems to undergo when placed in a liquid, as compared to its weight in air. Archimedes' principle states that an object fully or partly immersed in a liquid is buoyed upward by a force equal to the weight of the liquid displaced by that object. From this principle, he concluded that a floating object displaces an amount of liquid equal to its own weight.
SonicClang @ Jan 2nd 2007 7:39AM
Ahh yes, tat, one of those strange British words where the second "T" really isn't pronounced the same as the first "T" :) Never heard of it myself. But thanks for giving us the link to the definition.
China may some day become a legitimate gaming market if their government lets their people be and stops filtering their lives.
"Why do big boats float?" That was fricken hillarious! :D Then the one guy explained it, as if you didn't understand it. It was meant to be funny... I get it :)
Grey Acumen @ Jan 2nd 2007 7:40AM
Well, this pretty much proves it... ask a silly question, get a silly answer... and absolutely nothing else about the main issue at hand.
I would have answered the boat question myself, but everyone else got to it first...oh well, maybe next time.
EuroLamer @ Jan 2nd 2007 8:06AM
Erm, "tat" is pronounced exactly as you see it. Both "t"s are pronounced exactly the same. I have no idea which word you're thinking about, SonicClang.
Soren K @ Jan 2nd 2007 8:53AM
China as a videogame market would be awesome!
It would be interesting to see how the XBOX did over there as compared to Japan because there would be none of the Japanese brand loyalty (while China and Japan may have some superficial similarities, they are not exactly best friends).
Zach @ Jan 2nd 2007 9:00AM
@ 9
Asia in general hates the Xbox.
Jonstiq @ Jan 2nd 2007 9:10AM
Tat is often used in the uk as a description for an attractive girl, eg, look at that nice bit of tat.
SiteSeer @ Jan 2nd 2007 10:27AM
China has a proper video gaming market like American college campuses have a proper pay-for-music/movie market. Which is to say that a _lot_ of people are playing video games, just the suits aren't making as much money as they should. This keeps $600 PS3s and $400 Xboxes out of the market. When their currency valuation goes up (not in the near future) the consumers there will have the buying power to become a "proper" market, the gamers are already there.
tom @ Jan 2nd 2007 10:51AM
anyone got any suggestions on how to add to the volume and ship a US wii to japan?? I can't find any stores selling US Wiis that ship internationally..
and, because of stupid reagion coding, if i buy a japanese one here then i'm forced to play all my games in japanese. darn you reggie!!
american assumptions about the british language never cease to bring a smile..
Cabcru @ Jan 2nd 2007 11:17AM
@ 11. Is this like an online version of 'Call My Bluff' because I've _never_ heard 'tat' used in that fashion over here (UK), nevermind often.
Or you just trying to mess with our brothers from over the pond for if they ever visit? "Oh yeah, 'tat' is a compliment. Uh, so is um... 'skanky whore', really!"
JS Beckerist @ Jan 2nd 2007 11:40AM
Tat is pronounced "tah" with the second T being much softer than the first. Your tongue doesn't even touch the roof of your mouth the second T around, rather the "hard" sound is made with the back of your throat, resulting in a much softer T...
And yes, blame the Brits
Kris @ Jan 2nd 2007 12:42PM
15 - tat is not pronounced "tah" at all. As someone already said, it's pronounced "tat" (sounds like cat).
Pal @ Jan 2nd 2007 1:11PM
I am tickled that you mentioned Doraemon :) I've fansubbed a few Doraemon movies actually.
Miz Marie @ Jan 2nd 2007 3:15PM
You may be alright with 'tat,' but this one needs help:
But hey, everyone's a winner baby.
Ooh, I want to be a winner baby! Oh, wait, I think you dropped a comma somewhere. Still an interesting article, though I'm not sure the last paragraph really fits in thematically. Go forth and write a follow-up!
Scott @ Jan 2nd 2007 5:40PM
Zach: The rest of Asia may not like the Xbox, but when I lived in Beijing from 2002 to 2005, my brother-in-law and all his friends (mid-20s to early 30s) loved to come over and play my Xbox. They had read about it and knew it was the most powerful machine out there. The Chinese don't show the same aversion to shooter games that the Japanese do (Counter-Strike and Quake 2 are huge phenomena over there) so they take readily to titles like "Halo".
Sony tried to launch the PS2 there a couple years ago and it totally failed. The rampant piracy there is a huge issue for an industry that relies on the software to be profitable. Hard to have a business model that works when pirate versions of the games can be bought for $1.
China's cultural autocrats, already suspicious of video games, are even more cagey when it comes to foreign games. Very few foreign games receive official approval to be sold there, and the ones that do have pretty non-political themes, like World of Warcraft. It's impossible to imagine a game like "Splinter Cell", where the story involves corrupt Chinese generals, or "Battlefield 2", in which you can play as American soldiers fighting Chinese ones on Chinese soil, getting approved.
Finally, something like Xbox Live must totally give them the willies. Who knows what people would say to each other, or what messages they would send? Of course the number of gamers who would actually get political would be totally small, but no amount of dissent or disloyalty is too insignificant to escape the attention of the government.
However, if Microsoft can convince the powers-that-be that Live won't be a hotbed of antisocial and antigovernment sentiment, it might be the answer to their piracy concerns because they could use online authentication for the hardware and games. Sure it's not perfect but it might be enough to give them a viable business model.
The final point is that China does have a thriving video game market, just not a thriving console market. It's shaping up to be more like Korea than the U.S. or Japan, with MMORPGs like "Legend of Mir" and "WoW" accounting for most of the action. I believe at least one PC-oriented gaming company has said they want to make a console for China, but I'd be surprised if anyone there did anything significant for the next 3-5 years.
tom @ Jan 3rd 2007 1:55AM
but how many people in china have internet at home to make use of Live, or to enable it as a distribution method?
Last time i was there (which was a few years ago, true) almost no-one had internet at home. Internet cafes, however, were HUGE.. with millions of people using them to play games or send email.
I suspect that china will be similar to korea in respect to people spending hours playing MMORPGs in internet cafes as well.
The sort of distribution model that might work in china is something similar to Steam's internet cafes deal. If MS could tailor Live to work for internet cafes then they could fill the cafes with xboxes and have those cafes pay subscriptions to authorise game downloads.
Then the cafes could pass those costs on to their customers.
S @ Jan 3rd 2007 4:03AM
Yea, the piracy thing really kills any sort of hardware/software market there. Not to mention that China is going to make its own political games just like the Middle-East dose.
Oh, and for the people that have been to China, how bad is the iQue brand there? ;P
Gerald Briggs @ Jan 6th 2007 12:07AM
It's a nice example of multi-national manufacturing. The Japanese designed product is built (or assembled?) in China while the CPU is and IBM product from New York, I think.