Bach Dismisses Analysts – Bullish About 360 in Japan

[Aquanox]

Head of Xbox Robbie Bach has made some impressively bullish assertions in Japan today, dismissing analysts’ predictions and claiming certain success for the emerging next-generation Xbox 360 platform.

Several recent surveys carried out in Japan, most notably by Enterbrain’s Famitsu Weekly, showed that interest in the Xbox 360 platform is still rather low. "None of that is worth anything," he said at the Reuters Technology and Telecoms Summit in Tokyo this morning, stating that the heritage of the previous incarnation of Xbox and it’s lack of software as key. "Ultimately, if we had great games, people would have put a big, black Xbox in the living room", he said.

Of course, Japanese analysts immediately queued up to go on record, all eager to state just how doomed the 360’s Japanese push already is. "There is no way it will come close to the PlayStation," said Tokyo-based Deutsche Securities analyst Takashi Oya. "Microsoft will have done well if it gets 10 percent market share in Japan."

Can this be true? And why does nobody ever point out that much of the Japanese public’s dislike of Xbox stems from xenophobia? It’s not like it’s not the case; the Japanese are famously xenophobic. Strange…

This time things are different. Microsoft really has learned the hard way in Japan. "We learned a lot from the first launch of Xbox in Japan," said Bach. "People didn't get excited about the games." Given the focus on much of Microsoft’s pre-launch 360 activities, if the line-up doesn’t excite this time around, the Redmond, WA giant might as well give up.

This guy's dismissing all the theories that point out that x360 will royally fail in Japan. All we can say by this time is that only time will tell.

Source: Spong

[korphaeron]

I think MS will end up in Japan like Nintendo are over here; they will gain a good fanbase, and end up making enough money for profit.