In the West, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was released on the Xbox 360. In Japan, it wasn’t. Here’s why.
While speaking on the HideChan Radio podcast, Kojima Productions producer Yuji Korekado mentioned that Rising was originally announced for Japan. “However, around last year, Xbox 360 sales didn’t really grow [in Japan],” added Korekado.
Meaning? That while outside Japan, the console has racked up impressive sales numbers, in Japan, a country where the Xbox 360 has always struggled, the console began doing worse.
The marketing plan for Japan included several hundred thousand copies of Rising for the PS3. The number for the Xbox 360 was, from the sound of it, much, much less.
“Bwah? I thought [after seeing the projected figures],” Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima said on his podcast. “And if we did release that [number in Japan], there’s was talk that it would be rough on the brand.” It sounds like there was concern that low sales figures for the Xbox 360 version could somehow reflect poorly on the game in Japan.
But Xbox 360 owners in Japan wanted the title, and Rising‘s developers wanted to make sure that Japanese Xbox 360 owners could play it, so a solution was devised: Rising‘s Western version of actually has Japanese subtitles so that Japanese Xbox 360 owners can import the game and play it in their native language. That’s thoughtful!
In the same podcast, Kojima went on to talk about how there were plans for a PC version of Rising.
第３１２回 [HideChan]
Comments
7 responses to “Konami Explains Why Metal Gear Rising Isn’t On The Xbox 360 In Japan”
Why not release a small number of games on 360 then to help it grow?
Or make it a downloadable title?
Exactly. Surely if people had options their opinions would change about the 360
I imagine both of these reasons fall under ‘being rough on the brand’. A small, restricted release tends to indicate a lack of faith in the product (even if it isn’t the case), while releasing it only as a downloadable title tends to indicate that it isn’t a ‘retail-quality’ game (again, even if it isn’t the case).
Slightly related to this, does anybody know if the JP Xbox version of No more Heroes is region free?
It was such a horrible, horrible game he didnt want to torment Japanese X360 owners
If only he realised this and didnt want to torment the rest of the world with this rubbish game, we would have been better off
This just in: taste is subjective.