You might have heard that Kinect isn’t selling that great in Japan. You might have chalked this up to Japan’s reputation for being “racist” against foreign products. Personally, I don’t buy it. Case in point, Call of Duty: Black Ops is selling just fine in Japan. Sure, the Japanese port of the game isn’t the record-setting phenomenon that it is here in the U.S. and in Europe, but it still managed to do over 160K in it’s first week, outselling its closets competition by over 100K. Not bad for a game designed by Westerners, for Westerners.
Sure, the game sold much better on the PS3 than on the 360 (130K, to be exact), but I don’t chalk that up to racism. I chalk that up to the Xbox 360 being a console with an extremely high failure rate and very few console exclusives that appeal to the Japanese market.
If someone doesn’t like your favorite game, it doesn’t mean that they’re “playing it wrong“, if someone likes a game that you hate, it doesn’t mean that they’re “biased“, and if your favorite console isn’t that popular in a particular country, that doesn’t mean that whole country is “racist” against the console. Trust Ygnwie Malmsteen, Tommy Lee Jones, The Beastie Boys, Bob Sapp, Pixar, and McDonalds on this one. Japan likes American products just fine (as long as they don’t suck.)
Japanese hardware/software sales – Nov. 15th to 21st [GoNintendo]
