More U.S. Titles Hitting Japanese Xboxes?
- June 25, 2003 13:19 PM PST
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A shift in Microsoft's overseas strategy could be coming.
As fervent GamePro.com readers may have noted two days ago, there are only two Japanese Xbox game projects in progress at Microsoft right now?True Fantasy Live Online, and a new action game titled Magatama. According to recent reports from the country, though, this could be a harbinger of the company's future plans for the Xbox in Japan?in other words, they may keep the struggling system going by flooding the market with U.S. and European titles.The Xbox Japan release list Microsoft representative Masahiro Koide revealed at a press conference Monday contained nine Western titles, all of which (including Kameo and Grabbed by the Ghoulies) were shown in one form or another at the E3 show last month. A new Xbox pamphlet distributed to Japanese stores this week, however, reveals the possibility of even more games?including Conker: Live and Uncut, Sudeki, Voodoo Vince, Counter-Strike, Doom III and Star Wars: Republic Commando?coming to the region. Although these games were simply listed in the pamphlet and not explicitly marked as coming to Japan, the fact that they were printed (in Japanese, even) seems to present the idea as fairly likely.
Adding fuel to this argument is a new report that Microsoft Japan may change its Xbox strategy and allow a wider variety of Western games to find official Japan releases. The report, originally posted on the site of Japanese game shop Famicom Plaza, claims that Microsoft is planning to release overseas titles in Japan without bothering to localize them for the local market?in other words, they'll release the original English version with a Japanese manual attached. This move is seen as a compromise to the needs of Microsoft's Japanese Xbox userbase?a fairly hardcore crew, many of which are annoyed at the system's relatively small library in Japan. Since many of the Xbox's most popular titles are action-oriented, most of them don't really need Japanese in-game text to be enjoyed anyway... or so the idea goes.
It's hardly a secret that the Xbox is not faring well in Japan right now. However, Microsoft is serious about staying in the game business over there, and Koide has said on numerous occasions that his company will release the Xbox 2 (or whatever their next console is called) in Japan. The problem, then, is how Microsoft will keep the original Xbox a going concern in the region?a problem MS could be solving by dropping its large-scale strategy and concentrating on the 400,000 or so hardcore fans it's managed to scrape together over the past 16 months.
