http://www.1up.com/news/microsoft-outlines-future-plans-japan
Microsoft Outlines Future Plans in Japan
Yes, they have future plans in Japan.
Microsoft's presence at E3 is huge. They've got a massive press conference stage (pictured above), an equally enormous booth, and enough free swag on offer to fill up a Camry. The company's presence at the Tokyo Game Show, on the other hand? Not quite as much. MS's booth at TGS was maybe half the size it usually is, getting dwarfed by the presentations put on by Sony, Capcom, and even Japanese social-game giant Gree.
"We would like to have as large a space as possible in order to have lots of people play our products," said Takashi Sensui, head of Xbox operations in Asia, in an interview with Famitsu magazine published this week. "To be honest, though, given the scope of our Japan business, it's just difficult to produce such a huge booth. Our intention here was to use the space we had as best we could to get the most gamers trying out the best titles we had. We didn't have as many titles as usual, but I believe we had an extremely nice lineup, something I think anyone who was there could see. We'll be trying to have a bigger presence than ever next year -- I feel it's our mission, something we have to do."
Sensui was quick to point out to Famitsu that MS's reduced presence at TGS shouldn't be a signal that the company is slowly receding from the Japanese market. "From now to the end of the year, there will be a variety of great titles for the 360, both Kinect-compatible and not," he said. "It's a really full, well-balanced lineup. Kinect titles take a certain amount of space to show off, so it was perhaps easy to get the impression that they took up most of the booth, but we also tried to get as many other game stations into the booth as we could."
Microsoft's sales strategy for the 360 in Japan has been focused squarely on the Kinect for the past year, perhaps even more so than it has been in the US and Europe. Some gamers in Japan saw that as a sign that MS is trying to shed its reputation in the country as the go-to system for hardcore gamers. "Oh, no, not at all!" Sensui responded when asked if that was true. "Certainly it was our tendency last year to emphasize casual gaming alongside the release of Kinect, but if you looked at our TGS booth this year, there was a whole range of titles built to appear to the core market. We would like to receive support from the casual market, no doubt about that, but the passionate group of 360 users who have supported us up to this point will continue to be the core of our fanbase."
Fielding the casual market at this point in the 360's lifespan may be a tough road to hoe for Sensui -- Microsoft has sold over one and a half million consoles in Japan, but sales have slowed to the point where the 360 competes with the PlayStation 2 in terms of number of new systems sold. Sensui, however, remains upbeat. "One thing that is really plain is that, in the marketplace outside of Japan, the Xbox 360 has truly global support," he said. "There may be differences in taste and preferences between countries, but if the 360 was that boring, it wouldn't have spread around the world as much as it has. So our direction is obvious -- we need content that match Japanese gamers' needs and services to keep them happy. How we communicate this to fans in Japan is really vital."
-------------------------------
"it's our mission, something we have to do."...well Sensui-San,just do more cooperation with like Tri-Ace/Miswalker and develop more RPG...and maybe bring CRY-ON
bouns:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFGsbynmLs0
