Xbox planning to catch up in Japan

TOKYO--In an interview posted on the official Japanese Xbox Web site, Microsoft executive Peter Moore commented that the company is planning out long-term strategies to break through the Japanese gaming market. The Xbox has been falling behind competition with other consoles in the Japanese market. As of now, weekly sales of the Xbox in Japan are less than one hundredth of that of the PS2, selling only between 200 to 300 units per week, according to figures from Media Create.

Commenting on the future plans of the Xbox in Japan, Moore was quoted by the Japanese-language site as saying: "I believe that the video game market in Japan last year was stagnant not only for us, but for Sony and Nintendo as well. We're looking into a long-term strategy towards Japan, so while our current situation may not be ideal, we're planning to change that. In six to nine months from now, we will be announcing specific strategies that we'll be focusing on to start off with. The video chat and the Xbox Live Arcade that we've announced during the [E3] briefing are some of the examples of those strategies. We're looking towards a long-term strategy of 10 or so years, rather than being concerned about the short span, like this week or the week after."

When questioned about the necessity of having to release more Japanese-oriented games in the immediate future, Moore did not talk about any new third-party publishers, instead making comments toward in-house development. "We currently have a developer team in Japan named Microsoft Game Studio Japan, which has been releasing a number of great titles such as Magatama and Phantom Dust. There are a number of [game release] plans under way [for the studio] to continue doing so in the future."