Introduced to Japan in February 2002, Microsoft's Xbox gaming console met and conquered the island nation's video entertainment market with all the grandeur and sempiternal glory of Kublai Khan, circa 1274. The Japanese, it turns out, do not care for corporate interlopers and care even less for corporate interlopers with consoles whose game libraries appeal far more to the rather matter-of-fact tastes of Americans. All the zany titles on Nintendo, Sega or Sony arcade systems to which Westerners have pointed and laughed over the years, upon discovery through word of mouth or serendipity, are a very telling exponent of Japanese gaming culture — and the most likely destinations of spending money from Japanese wallets.
The second-generation Xbox 360, scheduled for a rematch with Japanese consumers on December 10th of this year, benefits from four years' insight and a collection of financially didactic bruises. Microsoft is publicly confident, announcing the Xbox 360's victory three months before launch. The Japanese are reportedly still skeptical, four of five turning up their noses in a recent poll held by Famitsu magazine.
So? The men and women working under Bill Gates have always been good at keeping mum, so the software imperium's grand strategy may not be apparent until the Xbox 360 tries to embrace the island with a faceted, aluminium-polymer-silicon grip. But considering the good electoral fortune of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi — whose intrepid campaign to privatize the country's postage-and-savings conglomerate included a head-turning commercial endorsement some ways back — and the above photograph from the Tokyo Game Show 2005, Microsoft is not about to dash a master plan with a breach of foreign etiquette.