Microsoft Struggles to Adapt Xbox One to Japan

[Baldr]

The thing is even here in america most people don't have the massive open living rooms like all the promotional videos would have you believe. And even those who have a even a moderate size living room I'm willing to bet the vast majority of them still play in the bedroom. I sure do.

The irony is that by trying to make the Xbone have broader appeal and attractive to game devs it has actually whittled away its potential consumer base by pissing off gamers with anti consumer tactics, casting out anyone without a reliable high speed connection, and alienating pretty much everyone outside of the US.

I loved the 360 and XBL this gen but if MS is going to be so egotistical and contemptuous then I have no problem skipping them this coming gen. Maye they can redeem themselves next time.

The Kinect 2 fixed a lot of the space issue problems of the first Kinect. Second, the games themselves are going to start requiring broadband connections like Destiny and Titanfall, the DRM didn't require broadband, just some form of connection for the updates.

 

[Baldr]

So basically, they really only planned on targeting one market? North America. Everyone else is an after thought. Anyone surprised by that?

It gets worse. They really only planned on targeting North Americans who still live with their parents or have a large enough living room with TV to support their Kinect device. The number of North American and European gamers who game in their bedrooms, dorm rooms, or smaller spaces seems to have been totally lost on them.

Oh and does it strike anyone else as absurd that they consider the most video game obsessed culture and nation on earth a "Tier 2 Market" that they will get around to later?

They consider the Tier 1 to be the top 20 countries that the Xbox 360 sold well in. Japan is not one of them. It not that absurd business-wise.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Trying to make a Kinect work in a tiny apartment sounds endlessly frustrating...and hilarious depending on perspective.

EDIT: As for the inevitable jib-jab about the Wii motion controls...have you ever used a Kinect?
The volume of required space is positively MASSIVE compared to the space needed for Wii waggling.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

It's a PR nightmare over there, and they aren't going to recover from it. In Japan, you generally don't announce mass firings of people unless much humility is shown and you aren't trying to spin it as a good thing. There's the issue of Japanese gamers spending their lives with Nintendo, Sega, and then Sony, with this US company trying to buy their way in by waving things like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey around. For most, that's not enough. The way they advertise doesn't speak to the Japanese culture at large, and most know that they don't have a space to accommodate the Kinect anyway. None of the X1 exclusives have tried to speak to the Japanese audience, they aren't exactly lining up for CoD: Ghosts over there pretty much.

On top of all that, I'm pretty sure starting off the generation by saying "you're a tier 2 country, you're not as important to us as NA and other regions, and you have to spend extra for this camera whether you can use it or not, and by the way please don't make that sound negative" isn't the most intelligent way to get Japanese gamers interested in the X1.

 

[Signa]

Lots and lots of big money is involved here. I'm not naive enough to think that they'd allow you to opt out with a check box that they put up on the screen for you. No, it's going to be buried deep in the system settings menus, to make sure as few people find it as possible. The little things like that make all the difference, because it gets people like you defending them, and they can still rake in the ad dollars from all the people who aren't informed enough to look for the option.

You should install Windows 8 sometime (or buy a PC that comes with it.) One of the first screens you see has two buttons: "Express Settings" or "Custom Settings". Express Settings is highlighted by default, meaning if you simply hit Enter on your keyboard, that's what will be selected. One of the things "Express Settings" does is enable Do Not Track.

The Customer Experience Improvement function is shown as a notification balloon in the corner of the screen shortly after you get to the desktop on a freshly-installed system. You have to click the balloon and approve it before it collects or sends any data.

I was pretty sure that the customer expereince program had to do with bug sending, not privacy. Do Not Track was already shown in this thread to be a farce.

And I install Windows 8 constantly as part of my job. No fucking way in hell am I ever putting that pile of shit on my PC.

 

[JarinArenos]

Maybe we'll actually get a Kinect that can work for the huge number of NA gamers who live in apartments. Oh wait, that won't be sold here even if they make it.

The new Kinect can fully track a person 6 feet tall standing as little as 4 feet away from it. Unless your apartment is the size of a shoebox, you should be fine.

Really? I'd been hearing that it tended towards needing as much or more open space as the Kinect 1 did (which I really couldn't use). You sure? Was that just more unfounded MS-bashing?

 

[Andy Shandy]

That guy in the middle totally looks like a Japanese Hitler.

Anyway, this isn't a surprise at all, at least to me anyway. Xbox just doesn't sell in Japan, because they've already got two "homegrown" consoles there.

 

[gamegod25]

The thing is even here in america most people don't have the massive open living rooms like all the promotional videos would have you believe. And even those who have a even a moderate size living room I'm willing to bet the vast majority of them still play in the bedroom. I sure do.

The irony is that by trying to make the Xbone have broader appeal and attractive to game devs it has actually whittled away its potential consumer base by pissing off gamers with anti consumer tactics, casting out anyone without a reliable high speed connection, and alienating pretty much everyone outside of the US.

I loved the 360 and XBL this gen but if MS is going to be so egotistical and contemptuous then I have no problem skipping them this coming gen. Maye they can redeem themselves next time.

The Kinect 2 fixed a lot of the space issue problems of the first Kinect. Second, the games themselves are going to start requiring broadband connections like Destiny and Titanfall, the DRM didn't require broadband, just some form of connection for the updates.

That remains to be seen, I still doubt its reliability. Secondly, yes the DRM would have required a connection every 24 hours to re-authenticate they system which would have made the Xbone just a paperweight to anyone with poor or no connection such as enlisted men and women. It's one thing for just a game to require one to function, its another to lock down your entire console. Thirdly, I have no doubt that devs and MS are gonna push the cloud down our throats too, despite its dubious benefits. EA made similar claims about Simcity requiring a connection to their servers to run and yet hackers proved that wasn't true at all.

 

[EeveeElectro]

Unsurprising, the 360 doesn't seem to do so well in Japan. They're much more confident in Sony with it being from their country I suppose.

This miiight sound stupid and maybe outdated but aren't TVs and furniture very low down in Japanese households? Kind of invalidates having a mandatory Kinect because I remember mine being a little shit if you weren't stood 'just so' so it might be hard to do it in a household like that.

 

[gamegod25]

I don't understand why this concept is so difficult to grasp. There is no Xbox One without Kinect.

Only because MS is making it required. There is nothing that the Kinect can do that you couldn't do just as easily (and more reliably) with a controller or a remote. All that voice and motion control stuff is just a gimmick and nothing more. Yes the PS4 will have a similar device too but here's the thing...it's optional. If I don't want it then I don't have to use it. Get it?

And no, I don't care about dancing or fitness games which are the only things the Kinect was even remotely decent at.

Yes, Microsoft chose to design Xbox One around Kinect. It's their product, and they decided to do that. Perhaps they are trying to make it so it isn't "just a gimmick". Perhaps they are trying to get it into people's homes so that game designers are encouraged to create compelling new gameplay with it, gameplay even you might enjoy.

Obviously it is their product and they can do what they want with it, I just think it's stupid. The only reason they made it in the first place was a quick grab at the Wii's success with motion controls not because they thought it was innovative or good for gaming. And even if they just want to encourage its use that doesn't justify forcing me to buy and pay an extra $100 for something I couldn't give to shits about. Like 3D in movies, motion/voice controls are and will always be just a gimmick that adds little to the actual experience. Even if the Kinect had had perfect 1:1 accuracy Steel Battalion would still have been a crappy game because it had lacking gameplay and story.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I see nothing wrong with a good old gamepad (which btw I'll freely admit the 360 controller may well be the best controller ever designed) and that motion controls while cool on paper only serve to make already simple actions more involved, more expensive, and less reliable.

My point is make me want to buy a Kinect, don't force me to spend $100 and just hope it won't be worthless in the end. Cuz I honestly feel bad for anyone who wasted their money on a Kinect this gen.

 

[Mazimadu]

I never understood why Microsoft launched the first Xbox to begin with. I remember thinking way back then that it made no sense and that they were just either being greedy and wanted a piece of the cake, or just wanted to flex their muscles. I mean, wouldn't it had been better if they had focused on games for the PC, instead of trying to prove they could do the console thing too? Look at how well they're doing now...

The reason why they made the original Xbox was because some smart people in MS at the time noticed that many PC game developers in the US wanted to develop for consoles also. So they got together and said "Why don't we just make a gaming rig with directX libraries and online for the living room?" This was the thought process behind Xboxes design and devs loved it.

Then come Xbox 360 and all the smart people were fired and replaced with Madden loving, Halo fragging, mountain dew chugging frat boys who immediately jumped ship the moment COD4 was released. Now no one at Microsoft remembers why they made the Xbox to begin with.

I don't understand why this is a surprise to people, or anything new.
Sony and Nintendo are Japanese companies whose product is aimed firstly, at their domestic market and secondarily, everywhere else.
Microsoft is an American company whose product is aimed firstly, at their domestic market and secondarily, everywhere else.

This is why Sony dominate Microsoft in Japan and why there are so many Japanese games for the platform that never even see a western release/translation.

That is not the only reason. The reason Sony dominates MS is because Sonys Entertainment division (Yes, I am excluding the tech and hardware segments) is much, MUCH larger than Microsoft Game Studios. They have 3 divisions, Europe, Japan and America. This means that each division would make, sponsor or publish a game that caters to each market while still marketing the games produced from other regions. This forces each division to understand their regional customers before they make any business decisions.

MS only knows the american market, and even that it barely understands.

 

[Atmos Duality]

The kinect is definitely not a success though. And if you want to be cute (and extremely ignorant), the Kinect 2 is in no way, shape, or form even close to the Wii motion controls. And you know why? Because they aren't requirements. Most of the Wii games work with the classic and classic pro controllers.

Dunno how yours works, but my Wii requires the Wiimote to do anything after I push the power button.
It ignores all other input devices until it loads into another program.

Even if it's just one point and button press, that seems pretty damned "required" to me.

 

[UnnDunn]

I was pretty sure that the customer expereince program had to do with bug sending, not privacy. Do Not Track was already shown in this thread to be a farce.

And I install Windows 8 constantly as part of my job. No fucking way in hell am I ever putting that pile of shit on my PC.

The CEIP is an example of what's known as "Runtime Intelligence [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runtime_intelligence]" in the software industry. Companies implement Runtime Intelligence to analyze how their software is being used in the real world. So when a company like Microsoft puts out stats like "67% of Windows users never actually use the Start Menu; they just use the Start Menu Search feature," that came from mining the data they get from the CEIP.

The bug-sending feature is Windows Error Reporting. It's totally different.

 

[UnnDunn]

Maybe we'll actually get a Kinect that can work for the huge number of NA gamers who live in apartments. Oh wait, that won't be sold here even if they make it.

The new Kinect can fully track a person 6 feet tall standing as little as 4 feet away from it. Unless your apartment is the size of a shoebox, you should be fine.

Really? I'd been hearing that it tended towards needing as much or more open space as the Kinect 1 did (which I really couldn't use). You sure? Was that just more unfounded MS-bashing?

From the Wired First-Look article: [http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/xbox-one/]

When the original Kinect launched, apartment dwellers lamented that they had to move couches and tables just to be recognized by the its depth sensors, let alone play a physically involved game like Dance Central. The restricted field of vision also made it next to impossible for different-sized people, like parents and kids, to play the same game. This time around, a 1080p camera enlarges the sensor?s field by 60 percent?a fact that the entertainment division?s lanky hardware guru, Todd Holmdahl, demonstrates for me by walking his 6' 4" frame toward the sensor. Even 3 feet away, the Kinect's onscreen display clearly registers his entire body, and he still has room to lift his hands above his head.

 

[Steven Bogos]

Microsoft's entire spiel with the Xbox One was having a console designed around "the living room," being a central device that you can play games on, and much more importantly, watch TV and sports. The problem with this in Japan is that the entire concept of "the living room" is a much less important idea for Japanese families. Many people in Japan live at home until marriage, and spiraling wedlock rates mean that many do not get a living room of their own until they are much older.

Hmm, I read this a lot and yet, having lived and been around Kyoto, Osaka, and now just outside of Tokyo, I've not met any young people whom still live with their parents.

Furthermore, apartments in Japan aren't really any smaller than those in England.

I'm not really sure if the Japanese concepts above are really as extreme as they've been made out to be in the past.

Colloquial evidence. The best kind. The numbers show [http://japandailypress.com/over-3-million-parasite-singles-in-japan-over-35-still-living-with-parents-031659] the the amount of young Japanese people still living with their parents is steadily increasing. The phenomenon is called "parasite singles" in Japan.

I also never said that apartments in Japan were too small. I said that the concept of the "living room" was a much less important idea.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I've been using the Classic Pro controller nigh-exclusively, and it's allowed me to click around in the menus with it.

Maybe I've missed some update (it has been years since it saw the internet), but my classic controller doesn't do shit until I load into a game that uses it. I just got tired of having to hunt new batteries down just to load an old Gamecube game.

 

[UnnDunn]

Obviously it is their product and they can do what they want with it, I just think it's stupid. The only reason they made it in the first place was a quick grab at the Wii's success with motion controls not because they thought it was innovative or good for gaming. And even if they just want to encourage its use that doesn't justify forcing me to buy and pay an extra $100 for something I couldn't give to shits about. Like 3D in movies, motion/voice controls are and will always be just a gimmick that adds little to the actual experience. Even if the Kinect had had perfect 1:1 accuracy Steel Battalion would still have been a crappy game because it had lacking gameplay and story.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I see nothing wrong with a good old gamepad (which btw I'll freely admit the 360 controller may well be the best controller ever designed) and that motion controls while cool on paper only serve to make already simple actions more involved, more expensive, and less reliable.

My point is make me want to buy a Kinect, don't force me to spend $100 and just hope it won't be worthless in the end. Cuz I honestly feel bad for anyone who wasted their money on a Kinect this gen.

You're still thinking in terms of the new Kinect being separate from Xbox One. It isn't. You don't think of the Wii Sensor Bar as being separate from the Wii. Same thing applies to Kinect and Xbox One. You aren't paying for a $400 console and a $100 Kinect. You're paying for a $500 console. If you don't feel like you're going to get your money's worth from a $500 Xbox One, then don't buy it.

And yes, Microsoft should "make you want" to buy its $500 console. If they haven't, that's their problem.