During a recent IGN Japan live stream, VP of gaming ecosystem at Xbox Sarah Bond suggested that the company may be working to deliver more original Japanese games to Xbox consoles. Her statement on the topic as transcribed by VideoGamesChronicle reads as follows.
One of the things that I’m super excited about is that we have over 250 developers in Japan developing games for Xbox right now. 150 have already shipped, 100 of them are in Game Pass and we [recently] got to announce 15 titles made in Asia and 13 in Japan. So much has come, but there’s even more that’s going to come in the future and I can’t wait to reveal it to you all as it starts coming out.”
This falls in line with recent comments made by Xbox boss Phil Spencer during the 2022 Tokyo Game Show. In an interview with Game Watch, Spencer stated that he and the Xbox team are aware of the desire from more original Japanese-developed games on Xbox, both in Japan itself and in the western markets. He cited Xbox’s collaboration with Kojima Productions—whose studios Spencer visited while attending the Tokyo Game Show—to bring a new Hideo Kojima game to Xbox.
With Phil Spencer. pic.twitter.com/Cbkla87dsf
— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) September 17, 2022
In a separate interview with Famitsu Spencer said,
We have listened to Japanese game creators and received feedback. I think the fact that we have been able to improve has led to trust, which in turn has led to games being released on Xbox. I think that feedback loop will lead to many more Japanese games in the future, and I am happy about this trend.”
All this comes as the Xbox Series S has outsold the PlayStation 5 in Japan for the third time during the week between September 9-18, according to VGChartz.
Xbox Series has outsold the PS5 in Japan for the 3rd time ever outside of launch last week!
– Xbox Series sold 14,077 units!
– PS5 sold 11,180 units!Nintendo Switch remains the overall best selling console in Japan this last week with 127k units sold! pic.twitter.com/KFfYoZpexr
— Genki✨ (@Genki_JPN) September 22, 2022
As you can see, the Series X fell far behind its smaller sibling as well as both iterations of the PS5 in sales for that week. Back in July we reported that the Series X|S line had sold over a quarter-million units at that time in Japan. Could the Xbox brand finally be making some headway in this market? If so, then this may mean we’ll be seeing more and more Japanese games on Xbox.
