XBOX-HQ.COM - JAPAN: Halo 3 Bows Out

After enjoying its minute on the Japanese charts at number one, Halo 3 is nowhere to be seen. Plus, more on the exclusive Monster Hunter 3 Wii deal. Click through for Tim Rogers' Japan report...

Last week, we talked about Halo 3 charting #1 here in Japan. It was the first game for any Xbox console to chart at #1 for any week since the launch in 2001. Selling 60,000 copies in one week, it also immediately became the second-highest selling Xbox game of all time in Japan, after Blue Dragon, which had sold 80,000.

Well, Halo 3 is nowhere to be seen on this week's charts. What the heck happened?

Last week just happened to be a very lucky week for Microsoft to release Halo 3, I guess: there were no other high-profile games being released, so 60,000 copies sold was enough to vault to the top of the charts. This week, Bandai's Dragon Ball Z Sparking! Meteor for the PlayStation 2; it managed to sell 200,000 copies. In the most clinical terms, Dragon Ball Z Sparking! Meteor is a refreshed, upgraded version of Dragon Ball Z Sparking! Neo, an entertainment-focused (as opposed to skill-focused) fighting game based on a Japanese animated series that ended its run over ten years ago.

Regardless of the oldness of its subject matter, it outsold Halo 3 three to one. Well -- four to one, if you consider that the Wii version sold 40,000 copies.

"Last week just happened to be a very lucky week for Microsoft to release Halo 3"Number two on this week's charts is Bandai's Gundam Battle Chronicle for PSP, an upgrade to their Gundam Battle Royale game, released earlier this year. It sold 86,000 copies, which is also more copies than Halo. ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat, Mistwalker and AQ Interactive's new game for the Nintendo DS -- which has hideous graphics, by the way, though it apparently plays really well -- came in third, selling 50,000 copies despite absolutely no marketing to speak of.

Meanwhile, the new Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon game for DS sold 34,000 copies and is nearing half a million copies sold, and Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core sold 30,000 more copies, for a total of 680,000, which is especially remarkable when one considers how many copies are currently cramming used stores -- some places are selling it for as low as 2,100 yen (its retail price is 5,280).

Why did Halo 3 bow out so quickly? If you recall, last week, I predicted that perhaps 58,000 was merely the exact population of Japanese Halo fans. The population has grown quite dramatically in the last six years, though it's still not blockbuster material. Looking at this week's charts, my hypothesis feels about right.

Surely, Halo 3 isn't yet dead in Japan: the theme of Japanese game sales as of the last few years has been "word-of-mouth". Word of mouth helped Nintendo DS explode into superstardom; it was a slow burn at first, though right about now the fire is pretty hot. And at a time when so many "hardcore" Japanese gamers are disillusioned with the state of games, maybe Halo 3 is a beacon of purity, of raw gaming experience. Maybe friends will tell friends about how great deathmatches are, or how awesome it is to co-op Legendary difficulty. Maybe the iron-pumping shooter freaks will get involved. Slowly, the game will start to sell. Who knows?

As it stands, the Japanese limited-edition pack of Halo 3 comes with a free 48-hour Xbox Live Gold Membership. Wow. That's . . . really, really stingy. Is 48 hours enough time to truly experience all that Xbox Live multiplayer has to offer? I personally have about a dozen friends that I enjoy playing Halo with, and it's very difficult to get any three of them into a Legendary co-opping session for more than one mission at a time: people have lives, and schedules. It takes a week or two to coordinate a rocking session, and I already know these people outside of Xbox Live. This is probably the most rewarding way to play this game, and Microsoft is only giving Japanese gamers -- many of whom have never connected their Xboxes to the internet -- forty-eight hours to miraculously find really awesome friends and have a really great time. I say: the free trial should me a month -- or, if they're feeling extra-generous, why not just give players a whole free year? Why make Japanese gamers, who have cold-shouldered Microsoft for so long, pay for Xbox Live, when the Wii and the PS3 -- and the DS -- do online gaming (we're talking semantically here -- yes, it's true that they don't do it as well as Xbox Live) -- for free? If Xbox Live is the 360's trump card, why not make it free -- in Japan, at least?

News-Source: Next-Gen