Ioman, it sounds like you aren't even trying to understand a culture and business style that might
be different from your own experience.
Personal Loyalty and Responsibilty are very important in Japanese culture, and people's careers
can be made or broken solely on the basis of what companies you work for and with.
For many business relationships there is no such thing as working "with" someone; when you
agree to a deal, then that companies success is supposed to be just as important to you as your
own. You don't commit to go "the extra mile" like we would do in the US, you commit to going
all the way.
Nobody in modern Japan really expects someone to sacrifice themselves for a business deal, but
almost everyone expects someone to stick with the deal no matter how bad or expensive things
might get, because thats how much giving your word means in that culture.
In the US, when a company screws up the CEO gets out by retiring with a "Golden Parachute"
of several million in cash and company stock. When the CEO of a failing company in Japan steps down
(by choice) it is not unusual to see them give back money and stock to try and repair the damage
left behind under his management... the Japanese take failure personally.
Because of that, even though it sounds like they might be playing games to us, Businessmen over there
are very serious about making sure the people they do deals with are just as serious about being
successful as they are. Microsoft has built their reputation on often changing strategies and
business deals in mid-stream - a reputation that looks very untrustworthy from their point of view.
Are you really that surprised that they would want to make sure that Micro-"Oh, we'll fix that in
a service pack later"-Soft is just as dead serious about making sure the launch of the XBox was
done on time and without any major issues? Every black mark against MS for the XBox is also
a black mark against the companies that supported the XBox at launch.
No wonder Kitaue was so mad at Ohura over the launch delay... the announcement probably
set his position in the company back several years, if not risking getting him reassigned (or fired)
outright. For a typical Japanese to yell "You Stupid idiot" even over the phone to someone else
(who is not a member of the immediate family) is pretty fscking serious.
You think its crap that MS gets to answer scary questions in order to make a deal, but Tecmo probably
thinks its crap to get backstabbed by unfulfilled promises when they have a multimillion dollar product
release on the line.
EDIT: Looking at your later messages I think I understand more what you were thinking, but this has
nothing to do with Microsoft being a US company. It might have a little to do with MS being a foreign
company to the Japanese (in the console market)... The Japanese are quite familiar with MS as a computer
company, and even to this day have to deal with two different versions of Windows for everything becuase
of some bad deals (misunderstandings) made in the early days of the PC market over there.
But ultimately this has much more to do with how they value strategic business deals, regardless of
who makes them.
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