News > Japan shows unexpected interest in Blue Dragon for Xbox 360
October 19, 2006
Content taken from 1UP:
Microsoft's great white hope for the Japanese market, Blue Dragon, comes out on December 7th in Japan, but pre-orders kicked off across the country today, with a surprising amount of interest. A hardware bundle will be available, including the Xbox 360 core system and the Blue Dragon software for a very reasonable price of 29,800 yen (around $250). As well as this, there will be a limited bundle, featuring all of that, plus an original table calendar, a special Blue Dragon faceplate, illustrated by Akira Toriyama, and a set of five miniature figures of characters from the game, all at the same price. Incredible value, really.
According to one retailer, Microsoft is planning to produce 100,000 of the Blue Dragon hardware bundles, and 10% of these will be the limited set with all the cool Blue Dragon merchandise we mentioned. With all the Toriyama fans in Japan, it might not be surprising to hear that these 10,000 limited sets are being snapped up pretty quickly, but hey, we're talking about the Xbox 360 in Japan -- the machine has been struggling to sell more than a thousand units each week recently. At the end of the first day of pre-orders, most retailers are now sold out of the limited set. One major online retailer sold out of their allotment within five minutes, others managed to last most of the day, but we are seeing a lot of interest across the board. Perhaps Microsoft will finally get a well-earned break in Japan. Keep your eyes peeled for Japan's top ten the week after its release -- it's sure to be interesting.
