Japanese market experts doubt Xbox 360 success in their market

One of the major markets which software giants Microsoft want to succeed in with their Xbox 360 gaming console is Japan. Japan is the home market of Sony and the current market leaders in the gaming console field. And to succeed in Japan would really mean that Microsoft has made its market in this new market they entered a couple of years ago.

Microsoft is due to launch their next generation gaming console Xbox 360 here in a short while and is hoping to get a similar response as they have got in the North America and European market. However, the gaming market experts in Japan have some doubts about the capabilities being offered by Microsoft Xbox 360 and believe that it won’t be as successful as Microsoft would want it to be.

According to Nobuyuki Kawamata, an analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Center, Xbox 360 is not even a hot buzz word in the Japanese market and even went to the extent of claiming that the console was in now way a must buy gadget for this year’s holiday season. Kawamata blames it on the lack of functionalities and features compared to the upcoming Sony Playstation 3, which is due to arrive in spring next year.

He also believes that Microsoft does not have enough titles ready for a launch in a major market like Japan where content really matters for the gamers. He was supported by another analyst Mitsubishi UFJ Securities’s Hirotoshi Murakami who mentioned similar points against the Xbox 360 gaming console.

In fact, he claimed that Microsoft Xbox would face a tough competition from even the Nintendo’s upcoming Revolution gaming console along with the PS3 as both these consoles support all the existing games for their current generation gaming consoles. Microsoft currently supports only a few Xbox games on the Xbox 360 gaming console and plans to add more support in the coming time with patches, which would require the add-on hard disk to the Xbox 360 gaming console.

However, market sentiments won’t matter much when the gaming console actually arrives in the Japanese market. We along with Microsoft would be very interested in seeing what the response for Xbox 360 is here.