XBOX ONE should not be released in Japan

[Kresnik]

Microsoft gained their foothold in Japan by (presumably) buying exclusivity of a number of mid-tier franchises from established publishers for the first few years of the console's life.

This was a pretty good idea because not only did it help in Japan, but it helped in the west as well (I know a few early adopters who bought 360's because of the JRPG's, who switched to PS3 later in the console generation).

The tier of games which they relied upon for the 360 is no longer around. Stuff like Star Ocean; Eternal Sonata; Ace Combat etc. has either gone to smartphones; gone F2P on PS3 or has died altogether. So they can't rely on that this time around.

I do not think they will gain any kind of foothold in Japan this generation. The support they do have (5pb & Cave) is about as niche as it's possible to get, and will not sell many consoles.

The reason they should release in Japan is twofold. Firstly, they will still be getting multi-plats aimed at the west along with PS4 (i.e. Final Fantasy; Resident Evil). The publishers of these games will still presumably want to sell as many copies in Japan as they can. So at least getting the console out there should appease them.

Secondly, western games are a lot bigger in Japan than people realise. It's all well and good saying that XB1 has 6 exclusives, many from 5pb, but stuff like Battlefield/Call of Duty/Grand Theft Auto is infinitely bigger than those titles. And again, these publishers are going to want to sell as much as they can in Japan. They'll already be translating the games for release on PS3/PS4, so they might as well stick out an XB1 version too.

Therefore, I can completely understand why MS are releasing in Japan.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of effort they make with Japan this gen. Will there be funded games like Lost Odyssey again? Will they get any bigger games exclusively on board? I think they've missed the boat for getting western JRPG fans interested in the console - PS4 already has Acquire/Gust/Compile Heart/NIS/Falcom developing for it, and Baba seems set on keeping Tales on PlayStation home consoles going forward. Western-focused multi-plats will keep being multi-plat regardless of what MS do. So I don't particularly see much incentive for them to develop for Japan, but who knows.