It’s a well known fact that if you head over to Japan the chances of walking into a house with a 360 in it are far slimmer than in the states. However, sales aren’t everything. Actually, yes they are if you’re a company like Microsoft who desperately wants to break into the market, but bragging about their customer satisfaction being number one can’t hurt anything.
In a recent poll conducted by ASCII Media Works Japanese consumers were asked to rate systems in six different categories: Value for money, variety of interesting software, quality of visuals, external design, size/weight of console, and number of acquaintances who also owned the console. Turns out the 360 satisfies Japan in ways the PS3, Wii, DS and PSP never could. Media Works says that this is because the 360 was highly rated in every category except size/weight and acquaintances (duh) giving it a total score of 78.3. They also point to the PS3 (70.6) only getting good ratings in the visual category, with the Wii (70.6) getting mid-range votes across the board. However, I think we all know that the real reason the 360 satisfies Japan so well is because it has a large American penis. Not even the overwhelming popularity of the DS (72.0) or the PSP (73.2) could make up for that fact.
Phallic cultural stereotypes aside, the 360 also turned out to be the most played console of all with 28.8 hours a week being logged on it by the average owner. It was also the most likely system to be kept in an owners room, which is a bit rarer in Japan as gaming is far more family centered there.
Published: Apr 19, 2009 05:00 pm