JAPAN: The Psychology of a Hardware Launch
PlayStation 3’s Japanese launch looms ever closer, and yet, Sony has once again eschewed advertising. Next-Gen looks into the thinking behind launching, and the mind of the man waiting in line. Also, Square Enix’s weird hiring strategy.I was browsing the Xbox 360 fan community for the Xbox 360 console this morning, in which a Japanese gamer living in America posted a picture of himself flashing the middle finger at a PlayStation 3 poster display in a Best Buy store. I saw this photo, and figured: this is as good a place as any to find violently interesting Japanese opinion on the PlayStation 3 launch.
After the first three dozen comments of "GJ" (Japanese Internet shorthand for "Good Job") were out of the way, the community surprised me by asking a thoroughly interesting question: "You know, come to think of it, I haven't seen a single PlayStation 3 advertisement yet in Japan."
The next poster commented on the PlayStation 3's small launch quantities, and concluded that, "Even more than when they launched the PSP, the PlayStation 3's launch is basically just a beta test."
This is a good point. If you'll recall your videogame news of 2004, you may remember a few photos of hundreds of people lined up to buy PSPs at large electronic stores in Tokyo. They had lined up because they were convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that they wanted a PSP more than anything else in the world. The absence of an advertising campaign was a shrewd move on Sony's part. It's not an exaggeration in any regard to say that 99% of those lined up all night to purchase the PSP had already obtained preorders -- in fact, you couldn't GET a PSP back then without a preorder. Why were they lined up? Without delving into the prevotee (that is, "preemptive devotee") mentality too deeply (there's probably a Wikipedia entry on that), we can understand that it's because they just wanted their new game console as quickly as possible.
Read the full text here...Tim Rogers
October 20, 2006
Source: Next-Gen