Ch. 15 - Retailing

When it come to Retailing, you can find Microsoft's Xbox 360 almost anywhere. You can find it online on Ebay, Amazon, Gamestop.com , etc. You can also find it in Best Buy, Target, Gamestop, and or your local video game store. I tend to stick to more towards Best Buy and Gamestop because of the attention that is given to you there. Just the other day I walked into Best Buy to ask a couple of questions regarding the Xbox and i was surprised to see how much the employee knew about the Xbox. What surprised was that he didn't even own one. This shows that Best Buy takes the time out to understand and decifer the most common problems and questions of the Xbox 360.

Ch. 6 - Consumer Decision Making

Microsoft's Xbox 360 is known globally to be the superior online gaming console. The Xbox 360 has two memberships. They have the silver which is free and the gold membership which is paying. While playing on a silver membership you cannot play online games or watch movies etc. When comparing this to Sony's (free) Playstation network it can be very easy to pick Sony over Microsoft because Sony's Playstation network does what the silver membership from Xbox cant do. But when you upgrade to a gold membership you can access Netflix , play online, download demos from the soon to come games, access Espn, twitter, Facebook, etc. Now u may be thinking why pay when i can get the same features for free. The Xbox Live has way less lag then the Playstation network and also you have less time down for maintenance and updates. Also most people choose Xbox because of some exclusives for the Xbox including Halo and Gears of war. In conclusion although they both have the same features Microsoft's Xbox dominates when it comes to online gaming.

Ch. 5 - Developing a Global Vision

Many may not know it, but Microsoft's Xbox 360 lags behind Sony's Playstation 3 and Nintendo's Wii in the Japanese market. The Xbox 360 is not as popular in Japan as it is in the U.S. In a survey posted by Matthew Humphries it shows that 35.71% of the Japanese gamers surveyed said that they don't buy Xbox 360 because they are worried about the future of the console. The Xbox 360 has something known as the 3 rings of death which indicate that the system has a problem. This is a problem that Microsoft has struggled with since its first release. Also 3.57% of the japanese gamers surveyed said that the Xbox 360 has no games that they want to play. This is probably one of the major reasons why the Xbox does not dominate over the Playstation 3 in Japan. The Xbox 360 doesn't have as many role playing games as the Playstation 3 has which the Japanese enjoy. This was proven when Namco released Tales of Vesperia, a game exclusively for the Xbox 360. Tales of Vesperia was released in August 7, 2008. In the week of August 4-10 the Xbox 360 sold 24,962, In contrast the Playstation only sold 9,673. With the sales highly increasing due to the exclusive role playing game Microsfot is considering making more japan specific titles to satisfy the Japanese gaming market.