Xbox 360 Fails in Asia — Not Because of Xenophobia

Many so-called Video Game Journalists has speculated on the failure of Xbox 360 in Japan and has blamed it on xenophobia and I assume they actually know what the word means with their limited college education and average intelligence. Those of us at AGG know exactly why, not because we are smart and insightful and are real writers instead of stupid journalists, we ARE all those and more, but that’s besides the point, it is because we are Asian. Anyone who knows the culture know that xenophobia exists more in Ohio (no offense to those who live there, just pity) than anywhere else in Asia. We know that the East has lost that cultural dominance since the day of Genghis Khan or Japan’s invasion in World War II, there was a time, and there may yet still be with the current economic rise of China, that we would colonize space and the official language of the world would be Cantonese — this was actually depicted in various Science Fiction works like Firefly and Cowboy Bebop… but I digress. As a matter of fact that people from Hong Kong live on milk tea (a British product if you ignorant rednecks didn’t know), and Japanese female’s style of make-up actually camouflage them into looking more like a white girl (and not just Anime like), those are testaments that we are opened to western influence, as a matter of fact, our lives are shaped by influences from the outside.

We all know that Apple’s iPod and iPhone succeeded where Microsoft’s Xbox failed, for a detailed article about Apple’s success in Japan you can read the Escapist article. The main reason for Apple’s success is because Apple has a product that is distinctly American yet aesthetically pleasing and stylish to the folks in Asia, while Microsoft crafted a grotesque monster for the first generation Xbox that nobody liked, learned from its mistake, spent its unlimited resource of funds it had and used Japanese designers to make a pleasing and elegant Xbox 360 design; but in other words, really, Microsoft created a wolf and then cloaked it in sheep’s clothing, while Apple had always just been, Apple. The conclusion of that is, it really has nothing to do with xenophobia, a big word journalists throw around to make themselves look smart.

For why the 360 fails in Asia, yes the phenomenon is not limited to Japan, one doesn’t really have to do his research in Tokyo, one starts from Asians who live in the West, because if they cant accept something that is invading their culture, no actual Asians living in the Orient would. If we break down all the factors, there are 3 laws that Microsoft didn’t adhere to or failed to understand that resulted in its failure, and those are the laws of First Impression, Peer Pressure, and Cultural Legacy.

1) First Impression — the 360 fails, as good a machine as it actually is, it is because its predecessor the XBox is a failure — it is the most grotesque thing I have ever laid eyes on, and that is an understatement, think of an intimate encounter with a 400-pound Gorilla, covered in centipedes and cockroaches, and that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of its hideousness…  I don’t know what architectural design decision leads to the creation of that monster, no Asian I have ever come across thought that the XBox looked remotely cool (I am sure fan boys would vehemently disagree), let alone it is so huge that it would be bigger than most dining tables in Japan. Anyone who knows the Game and the rules of attraction, knows that 1 person only has a short window of 5 minutes to make the first impression, and once you fail that, you will need to move mountains to have someone give you a second chance, that is exactly what Microsoft is doing right now, trying to make up for their failed first impression. Aesthetic tastes aside, there just aren’t enough  good games on the first Xbox, not at all, it was an utter disaster. I am sure I don’t speak for everyone, not even all Asians, but when we finally purchased a 360, we compiled a list of worthy games that was on the original Xbox which we obviously missed, just so we could test out the backward compatibility to play it on the 360:

1. Panzer Dragoon Orta  (great great game that should not be missed)
2. Jade Empire  (we ended up playing this on the 360 but it has a PC version)
3.  Knights of Old Republic 1 (we didn’t get this because we had it on PC)
4. Knights of Old Republic 2 (we didn’t get this because we had it on PC)
5.  Shen Mue 2 (we had the import on Dreamcast, but wanted a proper English version, but ended up didn’t really play it because it was archaic, and the series is discontinued anyway)
6. Ninja gaiden Black (A great game but arguably you can play Sigma on PS3 if you didn’t have a 360)
7. Fable 1 + expansion  (Again, you can play this on PC)
8. Gun Valkyrie (We picked this up knowing that this is a good unique game but it just doesn’t work on the 360, we were hoping the backward compatibility list would be updated at some point but Microsoft never supported it, and never will,  at the end we gave up and had to sell this on eBay)
9. Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes  (same as #8)

Out of 9 games on the list, 2 didn’t work, 1 you could play on PS3, 1 you can play on Dreamcast, 4 you can play on PC…., so what remains is just 1 game, Panzer Dragoon Orta, which is really really worth your time. So if your gaming taste was anything like ours, if you bought a first generation Xbox, you had 3 good games to play, if you didn’t own other platforms, you had 9, and that comparing to at least 30 exclusive PS2 games that are supposed to blow your minds away, and Microsoft still wondered why it lost the battle with its Xbox in Japan. It simply didn’t know what it was doing. Further more, if you got a 360 in hope for some decent probability, there are still 2 out of 9 games that they could have provided support for, but they didn’t bother, because they don’t understand the taste of the East — instead they supported Harry Potter X and Madden X and 300 other games no sane Asians would ever play, not even if someone held them captive in the torture chamber.

You wonder why I don’t mention games like Halo…, because, seriously, do we really play FPS? I am sure you have heard Asians get motion sickness, that is as ridiculous as Asians can’t drive (it is because in Asia we don’t need to), I do know Asians that play FPS, but in general it is not a huge thing in Asia. We stopped playing FPS since Doom, because it was new back then, strafe around your target and bloodily shoot it until it pops gameplay, FPS hasn’t evolved, not at all — we don’t understand the Western obsession with it, just like we don’t understand why people would buy the first generation XBox — the big cockroach with an X on top. It isn’t the viewpoint that makes us stay away from it, we play First-Person exploration game, like from Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Deus Ex, BioShock, Metroid Prime, — to Oblivion and Fallout 3, we play these games, ok I confess I played the entire Oblivion campaign in 3rd person mode, and most of Fallout 3 in 3rd person as well, but that’s besides the point — pure FPS gameplay has never evolved. We played Portal, and fell in love with it, because it wasn’t about shooting. But seriously if we wanted to play FPS we would still play it on the PC, which is the natural platform of choice.

In every part of the world, the majority of its denizens are indeed ignorant and stupid, but when you are a trying to sell a product you ARE not gunning for people with an average IQ of 130 who does his research before each purchase, you are actively targeting the stupid masses, the ignorant who don’t know better because they already had the first impression of the first generation XBox. I confess that on multiple occasions I had tried to convince Asian friends that live in the States, or Asia, that the Xbox 360 is a much better purchase choice than the PS3 (I stopped recently, because it is no longer true), and I provided hard evidence, but I can hardly change people’s minds, especially those who live in Asia — they tell me only PS3 has Japanese games on it and the 360 is all American. I told them have you actually counted the exclusive jrpgs on the 360, that it IS indeed the jrpg machine of choice, and of course it doesn’t help things that the actual quality of jrpgs is in decline, from Blue Dragon to Tales of Vasperia, Eternal Sonata, Lost Odyssey, Magna Carta 2, Enchanted Arms, not to mention crappy shit like Star Ocean 4, Last Remnant and Infinite Undiscovery, all these once exclusives on the 360 either sucked or were mediocre like a cup of stale coffee — all with generic plots plagued by cliches and uninspiring protagonists, as if all the writers in Japan went on a permanent strike. The Japanese gaming industry has changed, but so has Microsoft, it has learned from its mistakes and found exclusive games that we Asians would actually look at, but we’ve moved on — and those of us that are ignorant, refuse to look at how the 360’s focus has shifted, that the fist impression of the horrid  first generation of this gigantic machine was forever branded in their memories, that I tried to move mountains and could not convince those who live in Asia to give it a second glance. Which brings me to the 2nd point.

2) Peer Pressure — I have  recommended the book Outliers to everyone I know, and if you have children or plan to irresponsibly pass on your genes at some point,  or simply not happy about your life and looking for someone to blame, or simply want to be enlightened about how the world really works as opposed to what your parents tell you, you should read the book — it isn’t about parenting, it is the story of success — that there are factors at work to success, not just hard work. Where this is leading to is that one’s peers’ influence is as huge, if not greater than his mentors and the ones who raise him. Basically if every one of your peers is not going to get an Xbox 360, chances are is that you won’t, unless there is just one exclusive game that pushes everyone forward to do it, but the xbox 360 doesn’t really have something that IS just that good. If your peers believe the xbox 360 does not cater to the Asian taste, they will make fun of you when you buy one, and you will shun its existence.

Those of us at AGG bought Tekken 6 PS3 instead of the 360 one, despite the 360 version having faster load times, and sexy achievements points, just because everyone we knew who is remotely competitive at Tekken doesn’t own a 360, or simply refused to get that version even if they had one.

Despite the obvious good qualities of the 360, that the selection of games is actually superior, and the online community is excellent, all the multi-platform versions seem to perform just a tad bit better on the 360, and our love of achievement points –  achievements make you play games as it is intended by the developers, keep a historical record of what kind of progress you have attained in your collection of games,  it even testifies to what kind of taste you have as a gamer, and how obsessive you are with your games (like a Facebook profile of your games), it makes you compete and share with your friends, but it is only meaningful if your have friends, or friends that will compete with you. Now that’s peer pressure.

With all the good qualities, there are obvious faults with the 360. That the controller is just infinitely inferior than the PS3 controller, that every Asian I have come across complain about it either being too big, heavy or hurting their hands, or all of the above (do we just have smaller hands?), not to mention the D pad is the antithesis of everyone who plays fighters, it just doesn’t work, good luck pulling off an uber awesome dragon-punch on it. I almost feel politically incorrect to use this word, the 360 controller is GAY. No offense to actual homosexuals, but there is just no other adjective in the English language to accurately describe how I feel about it.

Which brings me to the 3rd point.

3) Cultural Legacy — which is also something you CAN learn from the Outliers, if you choose to. In Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell claims that we always carry that cultural legacy with us, that if we insulted someone that came from herd culture and they are more likely to defend their honor (beat us up or shoot us), and on the other side of the spectrum, Asians are hard-working and better at math because Asians come from rice culture. What does that have to do with anything, you ask, well fucking-read-the-book. Obviously I don’t speak for everyone, but only the majority, that Asians don’t like to owe things in advance, that we clear off our credit card bills every month and if we can’t afford it, we won’t buy it (aside from mortgages, obviously). Even if the price point of the Xbox 360 is lower than the PS3, not drastically so, but then the fact that you need to pay for the Gold membership to play online, everyone will see that as an evil ploy to cheat us out our savings. Never mind that it only costs about thirty-something dollars if you shop for deals, for 13 months of gold membership, if you believe that the 360 would have a 10 year life span, that is almost 400 bucks more expensive than it really is,  which just isn’t an attractive deal. Microsoft would have to give out the machine for free and uses that membership to recuperate its losses to get people to buy it (not like Microsoft needs to make anymore money anyway).

At the end of the day, the 360 is just not as powerful as the PS3, even though for the past few years nobody could fully tap the cell processing power of the PS3 and every developer claimed that it was a pain-in-the-ass to program, but we’re beginning to see exclusive games on the PS3 that are much better looking than the multi-platforms, like Uncharted 2 and Infamous. Not only is the Xbox 360 not a blue-ray player, it doesn’t even come with a wireless adapter which will cost you an arm and a leg — which gives us the impression that Microsoft is out to cheat the precious life savings out of us, this is not to say that Asians need wireless adapters, most of them live in a 200 by 200 feet room with their family of 10, but it would be nice to not have Grandma trip over it and kill herself.

In conclusion, the xbox 360 isn’t going to sell any better in Asia if it hasn’t already done so, for the past few years when it had all the advantages. Now nothing would move it, not with Microsoft paying Famitsu reviewers to give the 360 Bayonetta a perfect score, 2 pts higher than the PS3 counterpart. Chances are nobody in Asia will buy the 360 just for that, but they WILL get the 360 version if they already had a 360. After all who trusts Famitsu reviews who gave Last Remnant a 38/40, which in consensus one of the worst RPGs ever. Even though we all know that multi-platforms perform better on the 360 (though our brothers in Asia may refuse to see the truth), it’s just not reason enough to convince someone to buy one.

This isn’t about the East vs the West as it turned out to be, but people need to recognize the difference of other cultures, and not because of Xenophobia, that no matter where we grow up, we carry that cultural legacy with us which defines who we are, and in other words, what games we play. We respect what Microsoft has done, that it has made light years of advances of making its grotesque first generation machine into an aesthetically appealing gadget with much better game selection for everyone. But the fact that Microsoft fails to make a stance in Asia, isn’t as important as that the big M needs to learn why it has failed — that it needs to stop being the sheep that wears the wolf’s fur, pretending to be Japanese while it is not; it needs to be something distinctly American, offering an unique experience for its Asian brothers, like what Apple has done with its products. Microsoft needs to first win the hearts of Asians that live in the west, for we are the vanguard of that cultural stance, for we carry with us the best of both worlds, with our open-mindedness and bendable spirits, instead of fighting that battle in a place where people embrace dating sim (or raping sim) and trying desperately to pretend to understand it. We just have one advice for Microsoft, make the damn machine free, include it in a bundle with two honestly good games and charge people just for those two games at full price, and the software sales and Gold online membership would follow, and nobody would dare complain that Microsoft is charging us an arm and a leg, and with Project Natal on the horizon, if it actually works the way it is advertised (but we hardly doubt it), the 360 could still be a Wii killer yet.

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