I agree with you on this; however, while xCloud is definitely one of the ways of going about it, it won’t work if it doesn’t have the content that Japanese haners want to play. Which means they either need to find a way for those PS Japanese exclusives to fond their way on Xbox and xCloud, or to invest on Japanese exclusives for Gamelass with Xbox Games Publishing.
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Yeah, without exclusive content it does not work, expecially where your platform (even if not physical) is a hard sell.
Games leaving Game Pass = also leaving Xcloud is a massive problem for this… Yakuzas are starting to leave and there is no powerhouse Japanese IP entering to replace them. This also means you can’t play Yakuza on Xcloud anymore.
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The thing about “just acquire Sega” or the Sega Series X thing is how important was (and are) Sega to the Japanese market? If you look at a list of the top-selling games in Japan (physical only) here it takes until #174 to find a single Sega game, and that game is Virtua Fighter 2 for the Sega Saturn. Continuing on that point you probably saw headlines about Japan’s top 100 games of all time, from what I can see there are only five Sega games on the list. (four of them are Persona games and the other is Puyo Puyo. Strangely, both Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal are here, with vanilla P5 being like fifty places higher)
would be interesting to see how Atlus would react if MS did acquire Sega. Can’t give xbox the shaft when they own your asses.
Regarding Sega in Japan they are definitely not selling on the same level as Nintendo or Square games. Its more that Sega has been such a traditionally strong partner with MS. And Sega game sales and active users are pretty good albeit not the best.
Sega has 6.5 million PSO2 registered players in Japan, it might be just under or really close to FF14 and Monster Hunter world with registered players in Japan. I Will not be surprised to see it at 10 million by the end of the gen. a PSO2 themed xbox would sell or adding PSO2 perks to Gamepass would get people to subscribe.
Yakuza 7 had the highest digital game sales in Japan for a Yakuza game
Judgment was one of the highest selling new IP games for the PS4 in Japan.
Atlus games sell well. Persona, SMTV5. Sega messed up really bad by not making Sakura Wars and Demon Slayer on Switch. Switch versions would have tripled sales.
Then they still have a lot of brand recognition with the arcades. I think for sure an acquisition or partnership with Sega would help just with PSO2 alone.
Sakura Wars not being on Switch was a massive mistake and is suspected to be part of a reason Nagoshi had a bit of a falling out with Sega (the man just hated the Switch for some reason). They had Sakura Wars on Wii, even.
What a weird time to hate on Switch when the franchise is clearly asking for it.
From what has been said, Tango is currently a 300 + dev studio with 3 games in development. 2 AAA and 1 small game.
Also yeah, I would like to see further expansion. Make Tango into a powerhouse 750+ dev house that cranks out exclusives.
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From Microsoft’s perspective, whatever they choose they would need to invest as long term return
Whatever they do, they will lose money for long a time.
Now, how much they would lose?
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Whatever JP ips they buy, make them exclusive. They will lose the most money here but will gain the market share the fastest. Risk will be pretty high.
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Whatever JP ips they buy, keep them multi-platform. They will invest the same money as the first point, market share will grow at a slow pace but risk would be minimal. This seems non viable option to me. Games will be available on Xbox and western gamers would bee happy but not much for gaining market share in JP
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Invest significantly (whatever devs want) to bring ports of JP games to Xbox. They will invest less then the previous points. Market share will grow at similar pace of point 2. Risk will high. Again, western gamers will be happy. Not much for JP gamers. But good for JP devs.
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What they are currently doing. Negotiating own there own terms rather then what devs says first. Even slower pace then option 3. Least risky of all the option. Good for all the gamers and devs who agreed to the deal.
So yeah, problem is, without pumping money with huge risk the pace will be very slow.
The solution of above problem is… Partnership with the most suitable gaming company in Japan. They will have to share there hardware with the company and let them manage console sales and promotions in JP. The partnering company could launch there own store and control it within Japan and world alike. Microsoft Store will still exist along side. Microsoft will get experts within the JP to manage and grow xbox. This will reduce the upfront investment from Microsoft. Risk will be medium, pace will be medium. Only the return will be slow.
Microsoft will get more gamers in JP with less investment overall at the expense of brand/consolee sharing and low revenue share from the partner store. Partnering company will get benefits of associating with a console hardware, there own store with worldwide presence at the expense of porting there games and whatever games they publish with other JP devs on the Xbox console.
And besides, Sega Series S has a nice tune to it
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PSO2 is not on Xbox over there, only in the west. Lmao
I agree their current japanese strategy is a small steps one, they are doing (very) slightly better each year, like 1-2% growth, which is almost a stall and wouldn’t be considered good for western markets. But it lets Xbox portfolio full of holes for anyone who like japanese games, honestly, it’s “good” for anyone who has a marginal interest and/or it’s not a fan and might want to discover new things, but the subsection of fans of those games cannot be really enticed and that’s the catch of this strategy.
I believe Microsoft has a Japanese strategy but it’s looking at the long game. The idea that they’re going to drastically change the balance of console sales to those gamers who prefer Japanese games within a few years is unrealistic. The cost it would take to change that balance by any meaningful number could yield much greater overall results elsewhere. There is lower hanging fruit to increase Game Pass subs and their ecosystem engagement.
I do believe Microsoft will invest in 2nd party Japanese content with IPs they own, support Mikami to expand, in addition to continuing to invest in more Eastern content for Game Pass. The answer isn’t necessarily landing a Japanese publisher or buying a lot of Japanese studios right now. The large 3rd party Japanese RPGs would sell predominantly on PlayStation even if they were on both systems. Where Microsoft can change the conversation is being that additive platform for fans of those games. As Cloud gaming becomes more viable worldwide, a $1 trial subscription to load Game Pass on your TV using a Dual Sense controller seems like a realistic leap for gamers who’ve primarily been playing on PlayStation or Nintendo consoles for many years.
Until cloud is ready for prime time and Microsoft has shown sustained commitment to gain the confidence of Eastern developers, I’m not sure a blockbuster acquisition would financially make sense. 2nd party deals do though. Those are IPs that can grow in mindshare over time, build their permanent catalog of Japanese Game Pass games, and build relationships with Japanese developers. My gut is we’ll see some of those 2nd party Japanese announcements within the next couple of years.
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Nagoshi-san is overrated IMO and left SEGA for the money, let’s face it. I think the team wanted to make the best looking Sakura Wars game going and so just focused on the PS4, which had enough of a userbase and maybe the subject matter was another area that SEGA didn’t look to bring this game to the Switch
It was sad the game was never ported to the PC and XBox. It’s an amazing game and I love it and it would have been nice to see it on Gamepass so maybe more people would give the game a go
I only played the fan translation for Sakura Wars 1 on Saturn but it was so up my alley! I liked it a lot. The cheesy music and attack-name-shouting, the mechs, the fun villains, the Japanese voice acting, the anime cutscenes (I love when anime games have these, even if it was crusty 240p because 90s console). I was really hoping the PS4 game would get ported, just to see the modern take on it. Seems it won’t be though as it underperformed…
Anyway, even close to a year since I played the Saturn game, some of that soundtrack still pops in my head. Lovely game
I get your point, but this “diminished returns” thing should not stop Xbox trying to improve, because it’s used also as the reason why they seem to be weak against Sony moneyhats (it would cost too much for Xbox, public bad pr, etc…) or why they suck so much in marketing the platform outside NA (“it’s Sonyland and/or Nintendoland anyway” it’s the most popular theme), but at the end of the day, this is a hole they put themselves in (mostly, with japanese stuff there are also external culprits due to cultural divide), so it’s up to them to crawl out of the hole and imo the small steps solution they are using for Japan won’t get them anywhere, when the issue is so big, you need to first use emergency measures, then you can schedule your multi-year strategy of recovery, but if you don’t begin with something substantial, it’s doomed to fail imo. Let’s see these rumoured 2nd party deals (one for now and also from the most westernized director), the scale and the scope of those will tell us how much they are serious (aka how much money they’ll sink in).
You’ll love the PS4 version then, it’s basically a remake with fantastic visuals. I so wished the DC games would have been translated. Bloody Bernie peeing off Working Designs. I bet WD would have translated the Saturn and DC ones
I don’t think Xbox needs to sell well in Japan to necessarily win over Japanese developers. It will just solidify support.
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Agreed. The Japanese market is so much mobile and HH these days anyway. It did hurt the Xbox One having no Yakuza or Dragon Quest like games for such a long time. MS can’t make those sorts of mistakes again, even if it costs them a bit of money.
I also think dropping Xbox Live was a bit of a mistake. It could be perfect for oldstyle SEGA Arcade games or some of the best Arcade shooters
I think the key to success for Xbox in Japan is Cloud Gaming. about selling consoles or turning the Series X|S into “best sellers” i think it’s a waste of time. i think they should focus on other things. how to bring more japanese/asian content to Gamepass and take Xcloud to more places and refine the Xcloud experience where it already is and marketing. remind people “you can play Xbox on your phone”.
I play Xbox Cloud Gaming everyday. i live in brazil and i have a 200mb fiber internet. It’s not perfect but it’s going well. 
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MS should skip spending large amounts trying to lure big names and instead just foster small and diverse games from Japan. Visual Novels, Anime games, etc… all of those PS1/PS2 era quirky games. Get them on Game Pass and just be that console for niche genres. The Series S and Game Pass are perfect for this.