div>Recently there was some “big”, but expected, news that Nintendo’s Wii took the #1 seat in the “next-gen” console console race away from Microsoft’s Xbox 360. One thing that oddly no one mentioned was that the only country or region the Wii actually has the #1 spot in is Japan.
Fact 1: There are 50% more Xbox 360s than Wiis in North America
Fact 2: If you add the Playstation 3 and Wii install bases together you’d still be about 300,000 units short of the Xbox 360.
I know some people care about the Japanese gaming market, like oh, the Japanese, and there are some people (a seemingly vocal minority) who enjoy Japanese games, but really how much does that matter most consumers outside of Asia? Obviously Microsoft would like to gain some ground in Japan, but I don’t see any games in my collection that I would consider to be Japanese titles.
If video games are actually breaking out as the next major mainstream media format, why is it so important to get Japan? Have you ever heard of a movie getting canceled because the producers thought nobody would watch it in Japan? How about a book, or a CD? Me neither. I guess my point is, there is some room in our global economy for some regional preferences.
Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.
World of Warcraft to Introduce Disease in the Name of Science?
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
Quoting you, “Fact 1: There are 50% more Xbox 360s than Wiis in North America”.. If there were 50% more, then the graph should have shown 9.38 million Xbox units, not 7.03.
Learn some maths and get your facts right!
Fact: 150% of 4.69M equals 7.03M; quite exactly as a matter of fact. I’m pretty sure I have my arithmetic correct.
Yeah, Veo, you just doubled the Wii number of 4.69 to arrive at your 9.38. When you double something, that’s a 100% increase, not 50%.
Maybe when you are doing maths the rules are different.
LoL at the guy that pretended to know math.
hi, andar here, i just read your post. i like very much. agree to you, sir.