India Imagine Cup

Howard wrote:

I got asked this question in Pune - how come XBOX is not sold in India?  Maybe you can help me answer that...

For the same reason it wasn’t sold in Honk Kong, piracy…

Most of the mod chips and counterfeit software available on the market had its origins in places like Honk Kong and India.

I the Indian market is huge to market a product like the Xbox, but MS strategy was to get the cake split into pieces before trying to eat it all; so, US was first, then EU and Japan but the Japanese market is not that easy and they spend more money there than they did on emerging markets like Asia and Latin America.

Take a look at Brazil; if they had putted a little bit more emphasis on that market they would pass the amount of consoles sold in Japan long time ago.

The biggest marketing mistake done with Xbox was try to get in Japan right after the US; in order to conquer the capitol you most first conquer the small cites surrounding it and block any attempt of expansion of your foes.

Back on 2001 I was doing a market study in one of the most important computer store chains down in Costa Rica, the owner of the store asked me to help then to market Xbox and train their employees in how to sell it; they imported all their consoles and games from the US (they got them from Ebgames). At that time the Xbox price was $300, I sold more than 16 consoles in two weeks at $1000 each!!!

Now days most of the Xbox consoles sold in Latin countries are imported from the US and they have no local support in most of those countries, AFAIK presence of Xbox is “officially” limited to Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.

Another thing missing in battle is appeal, Latin countries as well Asian countries have crush on soccer games (same goes for fighting and racing), Microsoft has nothing to fulfill their soccer needs, they most know nobody plays NFL games on those countries because they don’t like American football, they love EA’s FIFA series or Winning Eleven (personally I hate soccer, but if that makes money then I’ll love soccer…)

I’ll love to speak with R. Bach or J. Allard and explain them a thing or two about in how to market Xbox in Latin America.

smashj85 wrote:

Sounds pretty cool goin all over the world, does it ever get old?

It gets a little annoying when you get stuck in the middle of where-in-the-hell-I’m and there’s nothing else to do around but get bore to dead… the funny thing is that after some time you notice the clerks at the different airports great you by your first name and they know exactly where you’re coming from and where you’re leaving to…

You may have many different country stamps in your passport but the only place you visit in those countries is the airport, the hotel and your branch office, and this repeats over and over and over… :-\


-R-