John Hummel

When Will Microsoft Own Up to the XBox 360 Bomb?

While Mr. Barta argued well on points 2-4 for Mr. Tripp, I would argue that Mr. Tripp's point #1 is erroneous. I have seen this comment elsewhere, which basically boils down to "The Japanese are xenophobes who won't buy anything not maid in Japan".

Even Mr. Tripp mentioned the iPod, but failed to mention Levi's (very popular), McDonald's (incredibly popular), Korean actors (fashionable), French food, and the like. But the key is fitting your product into the demographic. Most "true" sushi does not work for Americans - but a change in the sushi roll (adding mayo and avocado to create the "California roll", for example) has proven to work rather well in the US.

Each of the companies I mentioned above altered their products to the Japanese market - McDonald's offer the teriyaki burger, for example, the iPod can natively accept Japanaese characters without a hitch at all. Microsoft, for the first 5 years of the Xbox, failed miserably to take into account the Japanese taste in gaming. It is only within the last 12 months with the 360 that they have started to show off games that the Japanese market would be interested in.

That failure is not of the Japanese not to buy Microsoft - it is the failure of Microsoft not to tailor their product to the Japanese.

And lastly, as Mr. Ehrenburg states in his article, the US and Europe have *not* proven "profitable" for Microsoft even in the US and European markets, as his analysis indicates. If anything, MS continues to lose money even in those markets that the Xbox brand does well in!