Why Xbox failed in Japan
The inside story on Microsoft's greatest ever challenge.
Bill Gates was preparing to walk out on stage to deliver his much-anticipated keynote at the Tokyo Game Show on Friday 30th March 2001. The Makuhari Exhibition Hall was packed with a 4000-strong audience. Executives from all the major Japanese game publishers were there: Capcom, Square, Tecmo, Sega, Namco, the lot. Press had gathered from all over the world, and they were all there to see one thing: the Xbox.
Backstage, Gates turned to Kevin Bachus, at the time Xbox director of third party relations and the man charged with getting all those Japanese executives out there in the audience to make games for Microsoft's new console. “Here, hold this,” Gates said, pulling out his wallet. “I don't like having anything in my pocket when I'm talking.”
Suddenly, Bachus was holding the wallet of the richest man in the world. It felt thin, as if only a credit card and a driver's license were inside. “I was terrified to even open it,” he remembers over a decade later. “But of course that's all you need when you're a billionaire right?”
Gates' star turn at the Tokyo Game Show was supposed to show the Japanese game industry that Microsoft was serious about getting into the console business. Gates, one of the most famous people in the world, one of the most respected businessmen ever, had taken the time to make sure Japan felt important.
But all didn't go according to plan.
Bill Gates on stage with Sega executives announcing its 11 game deal for Xbox at TGS Spring 2001.
Read the rest here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-12-13-why-xbox-failed-in-japan
Long and insightful, true or not though, each to our own opinions of course.
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