What is “any other place” because there are a lot of places that aren’t Japan and America and many of them play GTA and FIFA.
you are ignoring 1 key thing, other techs are likely looking to enter gaming. Facebook and 3 other companies were in talks to acquire Activision, Amazon, netease and Tencent have been investing into gaming for a while now and decently heavily granted its been behind the scenes, Apple is rumoured to be making a console and I doubt google wants to be locked or majorly behind in a market most of the other big techs are entering so they would probably buy stuff even if it was just as assets to hold onto. Sony can’t compete on a finantial level with these companies and until 2024 they have around than 10 billion for acquisition unless they comment further as it would be lying to shareholders if they didn’t which they could be sued over. Sony will probably be priced out of this market or hell possibly acquired by someone like apple as sony’s big revenue steams are gaming and music and if sony lost gaming it would be a massive blow to the company.
Japan isn’t the only regions though and Xbox isn’t even bigger than PS or Switch in the America or the west as a whole. But EA for example, their sports games like Fifa are huge in the UK and you could get that exclusive to gamepass in terms of subscription services for the forseeable future or hell in general maybe with the rebrands, GTA is big around the west as a whole
Honestly suprised EA or Activision never picked them up but I agree, they make sense for exapanding into mobile, I wouldn’t be shocked if they were eventually acquired
I mean other markets like europe, and of course they play them, aswell they play minecraft
But you dont see minecraft helping xbox or gamepass grow in those markets right?
I will judge it once bethesda and activision biggest ips comes out
I am bringing japan mostly because thats what most people are talking about, but anyways most people around here seems to hate the idea of xbox growing in other markets with different content instead of buying another western publisher to do it
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Nobody hates the idea of that, it’s more the Japan or bust attitude that some have.
…I would say its the opposite, I trend to see people here champaining Japanese publishers being acquired like SEGA, Capcom or Square more than another western publisher. But I think people are focusing way too much on Japan as a market when it comes to xbox. Microsoft’s main focus within gaming isn’t xbox, its game pass meaning Microsoft is probably looking a decade or so into the future. I wouldn’t be shocked if they stepped out of the console business eventually granted only if Sony and Nintendo allow game pass on their platforms as a whole which…the only way this will happen is if Microsoft forces Sony’s hand…Nintendo is harder to read
Well, when you have to relay on coin flip to know if you get some content or not, I think it is fair to expect Xbox to solve this problem. Xbox gets all the western games by default simply because it is strong in USA and USA is a big market.
That’s not what I’m saying.
Even if Xbox concentrate on the western market the other regions will grow too.
A Japanese developer may not be interested in making their game for the S/X if there is only 12 million units and only 10% might buy their game.
However if all of a sudden Xbox has all the big western exclusives and now 110 million units have been sold the Japanese developer might be tempted to make his game for Xbox as the audience is now 10% of 110 million not 12 million.
Once developers from the other regions start releasing their games on Xbox even more people from these regions begin buying Xbox and then it grows in those regions too (repeat circle).
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I think there is a long list of problems that need to be solved to make Xbox the perfect platform, all of their competitors have strengths and weaknesses too.
Home console market essentially has a ceiling limit so the best case scenario for both consoles is around 80m each (and emergent markets are mobile and PC first). And even then in Xbox 360 / PS3 by the end of the gen Xbox 360 stopped getting japanese games.
PC market lives independently from Microsoft and developers are fine releasing the games to Steam ignoring both Xbox and WIndows Store altogether.
So? Problem with the content is always a priority no? I mean all Xbox acquisition are their solution to content problem as they need to feed Game Pass. So they are aware that the need the content (and in case of subscription services they need IPs).
It isn’t that easy to be the perfect platform that caters to everyone. Family friendly content, narrative driven action adventure games, JRPGs, and “niches” all need to be addressed at some point.
They have a way to go to get there, and hopefully they can through increased marketshare and acquisitions.
Of course it is not. They spent almost 100b on that already.
I am not arguing that they are doing something wrong, I am arguing that there no reason to kinda devaluate the japanese content.
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I think is as simple as folks not agreeing on the value of Japanese content as well as the ideal strategy to attain it.
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And what if all those 110 million players only care for sestern game eh? Fifa isnt going to increase the interest of xbox players for games from japan
Just because xbox could have a big audience doesnt mean that every developer in japan will want to put their games on xbox if there is not an audience for them
The problems of xbox with those markets isnt just the lack of games you know?
The more western content Xbox gets and the less asian content Xbox gets, the more people who prefer western content will flock to Xbox. It is like with FPS on Xbox - they sell incredibly well on Xbox. All the time. So people who prefer western content will stick to Xbox, and those who do not - won’t come to Xbox.
At that point I will lose all the my interest in xbox honestly
Meanwhile ps and nintendo gets all type of content, xbox will only get western titles
I think that there are enough people that don’t limit themselves to just western or Japanese games that a significant increase in marketshare would make Xbox a decent place to put Japanese games.
Does Nintendo reallllly get all types of content? How does Sony’s lineup of FPS, WRPGs, and Family games look? Each platform has strengths and weaknesses…
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I think an issue people have is that MS had to pay for their monster FPS and WRPG lineup and Nintendo’s monster lineup of family games is internally from them. A lot Japanese games just go exclusively to PS/Nintendo for free. They’re not paying for quite a lot of those, it’s just the devs thinking Xbox isn’t worth it.
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I still doubt that it will happen naturally. Microsoft will have to acquire something or pay for the ports.