Microsoft: Japan Isn’t Important, Europe Is

Recently, Matt Lee, a software developer who works at MS’ Xbox Division gave out an interview that covered the usual stuff- his life as a developer in MS’ Xbox Division, the Xbox 360 Architecture, and the gaming marketplace. It’s basic stuff, nothing really new and eye-popping, except for one comment that he made.

When he was asked about the somewhat disappointing launch of the Xbox 360 in Japan, poor sales reported by the retailers, and what does the Xbox team plan to do about that setback, Mr. Lee answered “Japan is obviously a very important market for us and one in which we have to work hard at. The main concern is getting the games that players in that market want to play.”

He continued with this reply, “one thing to note, however, is that Japan is not necessarily the most important market for gaming these days. It is also not quite as large as the US and European markets. The Japanese market is very important to the Xbox 360 and we’ve got a whole bunch of great Japanese titles on the way from major Japanese developers. Both the Japanese and US markets are reaching saturation at this point. The big battleground for us (and for everyone) is going to be Europe.”

Basically, his argument about Europe being more important makes sense. Europe is clearly the bigger market and has a stronger currency. With those factors at hand, you can’t really blame them for that statement. I wonder how Japanese MS fanboys are going to react on this.

Other interesting points that were raised during the interview session was the overall future of the Xbox 360. When asked if the Xbox ever support downloading simultaneously with gameplay, the software developer answered that they’ve recently released ” the Spring update that will deliver this feature along with many other nice new features for the dashboard and Guide. I’ve been beta-testing it at home, and it works very well. You can queue up a list of downloads and it just chugs through them in the background while you play games or watch movies.” Although he declined to divulge some info about their plans on selling an increased capacity hard drive for the 360.

Recently, Matt Lee, a software developer who works at MS’ Xbox Division gave out an interview that covered the usual stuff- his life as a developer in MS’ Xbox Division, the Xbox 360 Architecture, and the gaming marketplace. It’s basic stuff, nothing really new and eye-popping, except for one comment that he made.

When he was asked about the somewhat disappointing launch of the Xbox 360 in Japan, poor sales reported by the retailers, and what does the Xbox team plan to do about that setback, Mr. Lee answered “Japan is obviously a very important market for us and one in which we have to work hard at. The main concern is getting the games that players in that market want to play.”

He continued with this reply, “one thing to note, however, is that Japan is not necessarily the most important market for gaming these days. It is also not quite as large as the US and European markets. The Japanese market is very important to the Xbox 360 and we’ve got a whole bunch of great Japanese titles on the way from major Japanese developers. Both the Japanese and US markets are reaching saturation at this point. The big battleground for us (and for everyone) is going to be Europe.”

Basically, his argument about Europe being more important makes sense. Europe is clearly the bigger market and has a stronger currency. With those factors at hand, you can’t really blame them for that statement. I wonder how Japanese MS fanboys are going to react on this.

Other interesting points that were raised during the interview session was the overall future of the Xbox 360. When asked if the Xbox ever support downloading simultaneously with gameplay, the software developer answered that they’ve recently released ” the Spring update that will deliver this feature along with many other nice new features for the dashboard and Guide. I’ve been beta-testing it at home, and it works very well. You can queue up a list of downloads and it just chugs through them in the background while you play games or watch movies.” Although he declined to divulge some info about their plans on selling an increased capacity hard drive for the 360.