Microsoft's Xbox business is booming thanks to services like Game Pass, but one market it's still trying to succeed in is Japan. After apparently "losing trust" with Japanese studios during the Xbox One era, earlier this year it appointed the former Sony executive Mena Sato Kato as the new director for Japan partnerships.
Kato's job is to apparently reverse the situation in Japan, and now in a new report from Bloomberg, she's declared Japanese publishers "need" Xbox if they want to expand their business, and can't just do it with PlayStation alone. Here's exactly what she had to say:
“Japanese publishers will definitely need us in expanding their business. It would be difficult to do that just with the PlayStation.”
Kato is working with Xbox President Sarah Bond and Japanese game studios on a day-to-day basis to help improve relations. However, she admits negotiations won't necessarily happen overnight and expects it to be a long road ahead:
"We face a challenge and that means there are still a lot of things we can and should change.”
One area where Xbox has huge scalability potential is tied to Microsoft's Windows PC market, with Japanese companies like Capcom already experiencing improved profits from this platform in markets outside of Japan.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has also worked hard this year to improve relations with Japanese video game companies going forward. This includes Square Enix, with Final Fantasy 14 Online finally coming to Xbox platforms in Spring 2024. And more recently, Hideo Kojima shared a first look at his new Xbox project.
What do you make of this? Do you think Xbox is slowly improving its relationship with Japanese game companies and consumers? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
[source bloomberg.com]
Comments 14
Interesting article. I never really thought of it that way but it does make sense. Lately it seems like so many think it’s all “doom and gloom” for Xbox and “they should become 3rd party.” It’s nice to see another point of view where Xbox is needed.
"Just PlayStation?"
Pretty sure someone forgot that Nintendo exists!
This is kind of a tricky one cause Japan is so prideful and of course as mentioned the Xbox one did so many poor things for Xbox that i am not sure how quick many Japanese studios would jump onto developing for Xbox. I suppose if a few did and they see some growth in Japan for Xbox hardware many others would follow, but who is going to take the leap to start the fire? Maybe Square? I think personally we should hear more about Europe and what MS has up it’s sleeve to gain back some share Xbox one lost for them there. In America Xbox is close enough to PS that it’s real competition. Elsewhere it’s a bath for Xbox.
@HonestHick I have said this before but I really believe it is Microsoft themselves that needed to take the first step. Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey were an incredible start but then… nothing besides a couple of third party exclusives at the time (Infinite Undiscovery and the timed exclusivity of Eternal Sonata, Star Ocean TLH and Tales of Vesperia etc).
Xbox needed to have continued development of these games from the 2007 release of Blue Dragon to now and eaten the cost and eventually it would have snowballed into a first party “Japanese” style lineup that would have been hard to ignore.
I hope the rumours of Tango Gameworks doing a JRPG are true.
Spider-Kev wrote:
They haven't been forgotten it's just that many of the same games don't just come to Switch, it's just too underpowered.
Look at Capcom for example RE2, 3 & 4 remakes, RE 7 & 8 didn't come to Switch natively. Monster Hunter World didn't come to Switch, only Rise and Stories 2 (the later didn't come to xb/ps). Same with many other titles like SF6, DMC5, Exoprimal etc. and future games like MH Wilds, Dragons Dogma 2 are XB/PS/PC only for now.
Similar for others like Square Enix, From Soft, Bandai Namco, Atlus, Koei Tecmo etc. Nintendo Switch is often a different conversation.
Removed - unconstructive feedback
I would say competition is good for the market
Why don’t MS just do a push, start up a couple of their own Japanese Studio’s and show that they are serious? Pump good money in, produce a couple of top quality projects.
You can guarantee then that companies will be much more interested.
It's an obvious point that few people seem to get. I hate when devs say "if the fans want an Xbox version we'll look into it" cause the point of making an Xbox version is to make new fans cause existing fans can already play those games
@Spider-Kev Nintendo is not directly comparable. Just look at games like FF XVI. Switch just can't handle it.
i'm glad they kind of wake up before they suffer from theier bad marketing decision just look square enix learn it the hard way and the community speaked loudly and make them accoundable for putting their games only on nintendo and playstation, capcom and sega understood being accessible everywhere make their incomes flow more stable than limitig themselve to one hardware one platform only 🤷♂️✔️
@K1LLEGAL i certainly agree with what you said. They took the foot off the gas on games to appeal to Japan. But the install base is just so small there for them that it’s a lot of effort for little gain and it’s going to take a masterpiece game or two to see Japanese players even consider getting an Xbox. That is a mountain to climb but i do hope they can achieve it some day as it will strengthen the brand a lot.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Now that you've said that, watch as MS tries to buy Square or Capcom!
For the bigger companies like Sega, SE, Capcom, & Bandai there's not really any reason for them not too. (Still on Super Copium Bandai will give Xbox Cyber Sleuth Complete Edition.) However, for more modest sized devs, it's up to Microsoft to convince or prove to them it's worth their limited resources.
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