The Xbox business today is pretty unrecognizable compared to the business 20 years ago, when the Xbox 360 launched all that time ago this week. The business has had all the changes, a different set of executives at the top and a completely different portfolio of its own companies, of course – but when I think about the changes, one absence comes to the forefront: Japan.
It's hard to understand what the Xbox people were thinking 20 years ago. Did they know they were about to break the impasse that was insurmountable during the PS2 and original Xbox era? Did they know about the coming success, even as equipment began to break down and fail on an industrial scale? I believe that the leaders of that time would now say that they did not do this. know but they could meaning they had something special. This old chestnut.
Of course they would say that. But there are things that could be argued to show what they were definitely thinking at the time – and one example that stuck out to me was Xbox's aggressive commitment to Japan at the time.
The original Xbox was hardly a roaring success in Japan, but despite this, Microsoft found success in the region with its sequel. During this period you had an aggressive Xbox. make moves in the region. The developers were courted as always, but it is very important that during this period most of these courtships reached their conclusion. Deals were signed: Xbox eventually signed a tranche of high-profile exclusives or timed exclusives for fans of Japanese games both at home and abroad, and where true exclusive deals did not materialize, Xbox was able to successfully leverage the 360's advantage over the PS3 to secure optically valuable “de facto” exclusives.
Enix Square We were contacted, for example, and although it took a while for Final Fantasy to be shelled out, a selection of Xbox exclusives appeared – Star Ocean 4, Infinite Undiscovery and Last remainder. While Final Fantasy remained out of reach, Xbox was also courting the father of the franchise, who was now divorced from Square, resulting in Lost Odyssey And Blue Dragon are still two of the most unique Xbox exclusives.
FromSoftware, a small company that had already fully supported the original Xbox with games like Otogi, has signed a deal with Chromehounds and Enchanted Arms. Namco suggested Tales of Vesperiathe criminally underrated Eternal Sonata and the stunningly good Pac-Man Championship Edition DX. The list goes on. Perhaps most significant was Capcom: it was the publisher that offered promotional exclusives like Dead Rising and Lost Planet, while also promising true multi-platform daily releases in franchises like Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and Street Fighter.
Were one million soldiers from Ninety-Nine Nights. Tecmo Koei had Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive. Yes, and Konami offered Bomberman: Act Zero. It definitely made up for the lack of MGS4, yes.
However, it goes beyond these big names. Thanks to its PC-like development environment and apparently thriving Japanese development relations department, the 360 has also quietly become the default platform for weirder, more niche Japanese offerings that had been largely banished to the PC for a long time. For example, the Xbox 360 became the birthplace of non-arcade games, and genre-dominant Japanese developer Cave eventually brought over fifteen games to the 360, including the likes of Deathsmiles and DoDonPachi. During the same period, Cave released only one game on the PlayStation 3.
And it wasn't just the shooters. There were the occasional cheesy but exclusive action games from developers like Cavia, and the 360 had a rich list of exclusive Japanese visual novels and life simulation games. Yes, there were some pornographic ones among them (360, to my shame, is the key to the origin story of GalGan), but also beyond that. The 360 was the first console home for Namco's The Idolmaster, as well as the first place Steins;Gate was released, several years before it arrived on PlayStation platforms. Not all of these games were officially released in the West, but many of them were still compatible with the English language, and many of the shooters were simple enough to get the hang of. This was the golden age of importing niche Japanese games that, not so long ago, were often exclusive to arcades.
I think of this era not only as Xbox funding and championing a bunch of Japanese-made games, but also as a self-inflicted effort. I'm thinking of Crackdown – renamed “RIOT ACT” in Japan and given a cute Japanese-centric anime cover – showcasing the mission to conquer that market. This kind of individual thinking will quickly evaporate for Japan.
However, let's return to Japanese-made games. Steins;Gate was a fantastic example of what happened to the influence of Xbox in Japan. About a decade after its debut, the same first game in the series was remade, but by this point skipped the Xbox entirely and instead released on PC, PS4, Switch, Vita, and iOS. The change has come.
After all, Microsoft sold three times as many Xbox 360 consoles in Japan as it did the original Xbox. This was still only a fraction of Sony and Nintendo's business, but it was still pretty decent growth across generations. But I guess that wasn't enough to continue to commit to these kinds of exclusive deals and relationships with developers. Or maybe the Japanese market is just fed up. While the Xbox One had great success with games like Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Metal Gear, the next generation was brutal, with the Xbox One selling big. approximately 90% fewer units in Japan. Even the niche it filled became empty as many of those smaller games migrated to the PlayStation Vita and the growing PC market. And that, as they say, is all.
Needless to say, I miss this time. Perhaps this should not come as a surprise to the opinion of a man who owns a site dedicated to the very Japanese role-playing genre. But I don't think anyone can object to the idea that Game Pass could benefit a hell of a lot from some cheap and cheerful Cave arcade ports. These niche things are actually incredibly good at these types of services in terms of finding new audiences. And of course, a flagship JRPG like Eternal Sonata or Lost Odyssey would be killer.
The modern Xbox obviously knows all of this. In recent years, we've seen Microsoft make its most concerted effort since the Xbox 360 to strengthen its relationships with Japanese developers. Over the past few months I've been trying to get a sense of the steps being taken, and while that heady heyday of 360-degree views doesn't look like it's coming back anytime soon, today's efforts are at least more visible and visible. The noise that the Japanese developer community is making about Xbox seems to be trending positively again.
“The Japanese development community is probably one of the oldest game development communities in the world, creating games for many decades, and many of the iconic gaming franchises and innovations in gaming have come from Japan,” Mena Sato Kato, current head of Xbox Asia Partnerships, tells me.
“Their dedication to creativity, craftsmanship and attention to detail is what makes them so special and why this community is so important to us.”
Kato's role at Xbox is key, and her addition may be a sign that the company is starting to take Japanese development seriously again. Prior to joining Xbox, Kato was Vice President of Business Development at Sony Interactive Entertainment for eight years. In other words, at the enemy. This appointment suggests that while the Japanese Xbox publishing market is difficult, there is a renewed recognition of the importance of Japanese games around the world.
From the outside, it appears that Xbox is now picking up where some of those relationships left off during the height of the Xbox One's struggles. Japan's developer community has also changed immeasurably – shaken by the Switch and, in particular, the new openness to PC. It must be difficult, but Kato paints a picture of a Japanese industry receptive to Microsoft's new and very different strategy.
“Over the years, we have developed very close relationships with our partners, had in-depth discussions about hardware generations and initiatives like Game Pass and, more recently, Xbox Play Anywhere, and listened to a lot of feedback,” continues Kato.
“The industry has changed in ways we could never have imagined, and our strategy of being where players are is becoming more relatable and more resonant, and all of that combined has really evolved into a lot more of the partnership moments that you see today.”
It seems fitting that Kato is making these comments to me right now as Xbox releases Team Ninja's exclusive Ninja Gaiden game. Considering 360 launched alongside Dead or Alive 4, this truly feels like a full-circle moment. I'll admit, this gives me a little hope for the future of Japanese games, big and small, in the Xbox ecosystem. But this week, as 360 celebrates its milestone birthday, I can't help but look back and think: We didn't really know how good we had it, did we?
The Xbox 360 turns 20 on November 22, so we've put together lighting week it is remembered as Microsoft's most successful gaming console.
