Xbox One Fans Can Expect More Japanese Games

[Megalith]

According to Xbox Games Marketing General Manager Aaron Greenberg, we should expect to see more Japanese games coming to Xbox One: titles such as Code Vein, Dynasty Warriors 9, and Sword Art Online are already on the way, but Microsoft and Phil Spencer have been working hard with publishers and developers overseas for both internal and third-party content.

Speaking of Japanese games, we also asked about the extension of the trademark for Scalebound, wondering if Microsoft is still looking to do something with teh IP. Greenberg put rumors to rest explaining that the game was canceled, and that’s the reality of the issue. He has a lot of respect for the Director, Hideki Kamiya, and he feels that everyone at Microsoft believed in the partnership with PlatinumGames and in the vision for the title. Yet, sometimes you just put the ingredients together and for whatever reason things don’t work out.

 

[Bigdady92]

Great more japanese shovelware. Get us Monster Hunter FFS and you can sell Xbox One X Monster Hunter X Turbo Mega Edition for $999 and the japense will buy them in droves.

 

[Derangel]

Great more japanese shovelware. Get us Monster Hunter FFS and you can sell Xbox One X Monster Hunter X Turbo Mega Edition for $999 and the japense will buy them in droves.

No they won't. MS will never get a foothold in Japan.

 

[Bigdady92]

No they won't. MS will never get a foothold in Japan.

Monster hunter sells consoles. Just ask Nintendo (Wii U) and Sony (PSP)

 

[Derangel]

Monster hunter sells consoles. Just ask Nintendo (Wii U) and Sony (PSP)

And those are both Japanese companies. MS is not.

 

[motqalden]

Hate to break it to you guys but this isn't about breaking into the Japanese market. There are lots of people here who like Japanese games and choose PS Vita / playstation because they have more of these titles. I expect this will help sales quite a bit if they bring in the right titles. Its all about the games.

 

[Derangel]

Hate to break it to you guys but this isn't about breaking into the Japanese market. There are lots of people here who like Japanese games and choose PS Vita / playstation because they have more of these titles. I expect this will help sales quite a bit if they bring in the right titles. Its all about the games.

If MS were talking about doing this in 2014 or even 2015 it might help their sales. At this point though, the XB1 is pretty much sunk. They will have a hard time convincing Japanese developers to make big exclusives for their system at this point. They would have to throw a lot of money around and even then I doubt they could really change the fate of the system. At this point, I honestly would not be surprised if the Switch outsold the XB1 in a couple years. There are not that many huge Japanese games they could get now days to really give them a long term boost. And they have to get exclusives, getting more multiplats is not going to do them much good.

 

[vegeta535]

How are they going to have more JP games when they have zero presence in Japan? Persona 5 even came out on PS3 and not any of the MS consoles. If a big title like that wont come out for a MS system why would other make? Especially that a lot of JP developers are pretty small nowadays compared to the behemoths they have here in the West. JP have a lot of national pride and still wouldn't buy a xbone if all the JP games came out on it too. Not to mention MS primary audience in the west doesn't care for JRPG. FFXV didn't even break 1 mil in sales compared to PS4 near 5 mil.

 

[Ocellaris]

I like how MS makes this same announcement every few years and it always fizzles out.

 

[Flogger23m]

And those are both Japanese companies. MS is not.

If it is Xbox exclusive it will. It will take a long time and a number of exclusives, but it may be possible. During the 360's early years a number of traditionally PS Japanese games went to Xbox only, which caused mini-spikes in sales around the release of those games. The problem it is no longer 2006-2007, and games cost more these days. The amount required to keep a game platform exclusive must be a lot more these days. That is why most PS exclusive games are coming to PC now, with exception of Sony's in house games. Couple that with a weak release, and the One is perhaps the smallest install base this generation when comparing the PC and PS4. Which means to be exclusive, MS will have to pay a lot to compensate for lost sales.

Considering all of this, it will be really hard to make the Xbox an established brand in Japan. They probably need to wait until the next generation, buy up some Japanese studios, and have a number of them ready as launch titles or coming out shortly after. And then keep it up. The moment they let up is the moment they will loose relevance there.

 

[Derangel]

If it is Xbox exclusive it will. It will take a long time and a number of exclusives, but it may be possible. During the 360's early years a number of traditionally PS Japanese games went to Xbox only, which caused mini-spikes in sales around the release of those games. The problem it is no longer 2006-2007, and games cost more these days. The amount required to keep a game platform exclusive must be a lot more these days. That is why most PS exclusive games are coming to PC now, with exception of Sony's in house games. Couple that with a weak release, and the One is perhaps the smallest install base this generation when comparing the PC and PS4. Which means to be exclusive, MS will have to pay a lot to compensate for lost sales.

Considering all of this, it will be really hard to make the Xbox an established brand in Japan. They probably need to wait until the next generation, buy up some Japanese studios, and have a number of them ready as launch titles or coming out shortly after. And then keep it up. The moment they let up is the moment they will loose relevance there.

Outside of a handful of companies, Japanese people traditionally support Japanese companies over others. Despite the influence western culture has had on Japan, their traditions are still very isolationist and Japan first in nature. The problem with MS is, the Xbox has never been designed to appeal to the Japanese market. That is one thing that any successful foreign company has done. The reason MS' Japan initiative failed on the OG Xbox is because of how freaking huge the Xbox and it's original controller were. Even with games that should have appealed to the market the fact that MS was a foreign company combined with the giant system killed it in Japan. By now it really doesn't matter. They will never convince Capcom to make a real exclusive Monster Hunter title for the system. Capcom might be dumb, but they are not that stupid. They're not going to convince SE to make AAA exclusives for the system. They sure as hell aren't going to get Atlus to bring the Persona series over in an exclusive manner. I'm sure they can get some notable games to come to the system as multiplats and maybe pick up some indie Japanese devs, but they need big exclusives and that simply will not be viable for them at this point. The Xbox is NEVER going to be a thing in Japan.

 

[defaultluser]

I like how MS makes this same announcement every few years and it always fizzles out.

Yeah, they made this exact same commitment with the 360. And then promptly forgot it for a decade.

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/archive/t-431761.html

There's a very good reason why Microsoft will never outsell Sony worldwide. It's the fact that they just don't give a fuck about the rest of the world.

They think pretending to care once every five to ten years is plenty.

Sony knows if you want to make a commitment to a particular market, you don't just get distracted and do something else after 2 years. That's the reason why the PlayStation brand continues to be big worldwide.

 

[oldmanbal]

That's cool since the xbox 1 sold around 400 consoles in all of japan this year.

 

[DarkLegacy]

I like how MS makes this same announcement every few years and it always fizzles out.

The Xbox 360 had a very strong library of Japanese developed games. Some of them being exclusive to the console such as Lost Odyssey & Blue Dragon. I can understand why the Japanese developer support was lack luster on the Xbox One however since console straight up sucked. The Xbox One X however might be more compelling to some Japanese developers considering how much more powerful it is compared to the PS4 Pro. That alone should help MS land more games than they could with just the Xbox One.

 

[Derangel]

The Xbox 360 had a very strong library of Japanese developed games. Some of them being exclusive to the console such as Lost Odyssey & Blue Dragon. I can understand why the Japanese developer support was lack luster on the Xbox One however since console straight up sucked. The Xbox One X however might be more compelling to some Japanese developers considering how much more powerful it is compared to the PS4 Pro. That alone should help MS land more games than they could with just the Xbox One.

I doubt it. Console power isn't what held the XB1 back in terms of sales or developer support. MS being dumbasses and having a complete moron in charge of the division (Don Matrick, at the time) sunk them.

 

[Revdarian]

Less power, more expensive + Tone Deaf Anti Consumer marketting= XB1 was dead in the water at the beginning of the generation, they had to backtrack A LOT, don Mattrick wasn't the only one that was tone deaf, remember the "sucks to have bad internet" tweet, or how Major Nelson was trying to push that they couldn't remove the permanent online stuff?...

They backtracked once the preorders arrived and they were abismal, which is why Greenberg's XB1X preorder's statement is fluff, it is hard to not get your best first 5 days of preorders when you had just bombed your chance with prejudice.

 

[krotch]

If it is Xbox exclusive it will. It will take a long time and a number of exclusives, but it may be possible. During the 360's early years a number of traditionally PS Japanese games went to Xbox only, which caused mini-spikes in sales around the release of those games. The problem it is no longer 2006-2007, and games cost more these days. The amount required to keep a game platform exclusive must be a lot more these days. That is why most PS exclusive games are coming to PC now, with exception of Sony's in house games. Couple that with a weak release, and the One is perhaps the smallest install base this generation when comparing the PC and PS4. Which means to be exclusive, MS will have to pay a lot to compensate for lost sales.

Considering all of this, it will be really hard to make the Xbox an established brand in Japan. They probably need to wait until the next generation, buy up some Japanese studios, and have a number of them ready as launch titles or coming out shortly after. And then keep it up. The moment they let up is the moment they will loose relevance there.

I don't see the Xbox One or well, Xbox anything making it big with Japanese devs. The console gaming market in Japan is on a decline, so many of these small devs are simply moving away from consoles. Mobile gaming is increasing. Why companies like Nintendo have finally started making mobile games.

I agree with you that they'll have to wait until the next generation to try again. Either buy up Japanese studios or at least get 1 year timed releases. Definitely have to launch with a few titles and maintain that. I also think they need to launch the console like 4-5 months early in Japan and keep advertising to a minimum in the western world.

The Xbox brand image is a big deal breaker in Japan. The Japanese simply don't see the Xbox brand as being anything more than a console for AAA shooter games. MS does a completely horrible job of advertising the Xbox brand in Japan. Gears of War this, Halo that, etc. That's not going to sell the thing in Japan. Of course with the internet at our fingertips, they'll also see this same advertising in the west. They have to try and shrug that image off.

They're going to have to change their green color scheme too. That shade of green just doesn't work. Their booths look tacky as hell in front of stores, in stores, at conventions, etc. Sure, sounds weird, but well...the Japanese are weird. No one wears that color in their clothing. No anime characters have that color hair and if some did, no one cared about them. No one drives cars with that color. No one has lights in that color. It's just...a horrible color, yet for some reason. It always get pushed onto gaming in the US. Be it MS with that color, Razer with the color, etc.

 

[krotch]

The Xbox 360 had a very strong library of Japanese developed games. Some of them being exclusive to the console such as Lost Odyssey & Blue Dragon. I can understand why the Japanese developer support was lack luster on the Xbox One however since console straight up sucked. The Xbox One X however might be more compelling to some Japanese developers considering how much more powerful it is compared to the PS4 Pro. That alone should help MS land more games than they could with just the Xbox One.

You mean like how the original Xbox has much more powerful than the PS2, yet lost? Japanese don't care about how powerful the console is. Hence why the Switch sells better than the Xbox One and Xbox One S. Why console gaming is on the decline, while mobile gaming is on the rise. Power doesn't mean crap to the Japanese.

The only thing more power is going to do is land more AAA Western titles, that none of the Japanese care to play.