Phil Spencer on Xbox One Sales in Japan, Connecting With More Japanese Devs

The Xbox One has been doing great in the United States (and in regions like UK and Australia as well) but hasn’t been much to brag about in Japan. Xbox boss Phil Spencer talked about the console’s sales in the country and plans going forward to appeal to players in conversation with Play-Asia.

Regarding the poor sales in Japan, Spencer said, “Sadly the Xbox One is not living up to the amount of sales I originally thought the country would put out, but with the Xbox One S we will release it in Japan and with the co-operation of many developers we’re hoping to make a giant change in sales compared to the current climate!”

As for why the console may not be doing so well in the East, Spencer believes it was about games that could cater to the Japanese player base like Persona 5 or Nioh (both exclusive to PS4). “I think it’s due to a lot of games that are released on the console, I feel that a lot of the games are not games that the Japanese public would play and get themselves into. A lot of Japanese gamers really seem to like games such as Persona 5 or Nioh and that is why we decided to get in touch with Japanese developers to create such games as Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey for the Xbox 360. If we plan on doing better in the Japanese game market we want to release games that the average Japanese gamer will really enjoy.”

Microsoft is making in-roads with Japanese developers though as seen with games like ReCore and the upcoming Scalebound. “So far we have made friends with a variety of developers that then asked to create games for our system; such as Mr. Inafune Keiji with ReCore & Mr. Kamiya Hideki and the staff from Platinum Games for the development of Scalebound. We plan to talk with many other developers in order to bring more games to the Japanese market, we were happy to announce Final Fantasy 15 on the Xbox One which made me extremely happy and as mentioned we plan on a lot more connections.”

Can Microsoft turn things around in Japan? Let us know what you think in the comments.