Elsewhere we can write in agonizing detail about the extreme conservatism in Japanese gamers' tastes and how the Japanese games market is in dire need of resuscitation, but for now I would like to point out that a poll conducted by a Japanese news service among 1,000 gamers found that only two percent of respondents picked the Xbox 360 as their most-wanted Next Gen console. The leader, by an order of magnitide, was PS3, with a fan base of sixty percent.

It's not such a big surprise that Japanese gamers are not psyched about the Xbox 360, even after its redesigned prettification and despite some high-profile defections (Itagaki, Mizuguchi, and Sakaguchi just to name a few). Japanese consumers never really got into the Xbox: about 460,000 units have sold in Japan since launch. To put that number in perspective, think about this: the PS2 sold twice that...in the first two days.