NIS America: Microsoft 'Not Very Supportive' of Japanese Games - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 18 October 2017 / 3,195 Views
The Xbox One has failed to crack into the Japanese market regularly selling less than 100 consoles per week and having sold only around 72,000 units lifetime in country.
To compare, the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 have been selling over 20,000 units per week.
Publisher NIS America speaking with MCVUK says that Microsoft is "not very supportive" of Japanese games.
"Honestly speaking, Microsoft's approach to Japanese games hasn't been very supportive," said NIS America president and CEO Takuro Yamashita. "Microsoft, you know, for Japanese games, there's still a very niche element to them, no matter what it might be.
"Microsoft also has a minimum order quantity for their games, and their whole structure isn't really geared toward niche games or smaller games like Japanese titles, so they're not really supportive of Japanese games or developers."
However, this does not mean NIS America will never support the Xbox.
"We always try and pay attention to demand and see where our fan base is," senior associate producer Alan Costa added. "We're obviously not opposed to trying new things. Disgaea 5 on Switch was one of those and it paid off, which is why we're definitely moving forward with that. I think that if the right game presented itself – a game that already had a certain level of awareness for people – we'd definitely be interested in giving it a chance, but it's a chicken and egg problem."
Nihon Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo added, "Falcom is obviously a Japan-focused developer and looking at the situation in Japan, the Xbox has had a difficult time. Because the market isn't there, we have to take a 'if things improve' attitude and just pay close attention to what's happening. However, I want to point that out we're always paying attention to the market particularly in terms of the foreign market, so if the Xbox was to have a sudden rise in the west, we'd obviously be open to considering it in that situation. I'd really like that to be the case.
"When the time came for us to move from PC to console development, we thought very carefully about Sony's platforms and Nintendo's platforms, and we thought it was more than likely that many of the people who would play our games actually owned a 3DS.
"However, one of the trends of PC users is that they prefer gadgets and machines with a higher spec, which obviously is something that Sony was offering there. So after a really careful consideration of both sides, we decided it was more than likely that the people who wanted to play the types of games we made would want to play them on a PlayStation platform, so we decided to go with PlayStation.
"However, balance is very important, too, and thinking carefully about when something should come out is important, too, so there's definitely a big opportunity there for new platforms as well."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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