Former PlayStation Executive Joins Xbox Japan as Director of Partnership - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 September 2023 / 4,250 Views
Mena Sato Kato, who previously worked at Sony Interactive Entertainment for eight years, has joined the Xbox team at Microsoft as the Director for Partnerships in Japan.
At PlayStation she was the Vice President of Business Development for seven years and the Vice President of Mobile Business for one year.
"Excited to say I've joined Microsoft as Director for Partnerships Japan at Xbox," wrote Kato via a post on LinkedIn. "I will be leading partnership efforts to support our Japanese partners globally. Opening up a new chapter, unlocking new experiences in the game industry. I hope to see many of you at TGS!"
The team at Xbox has been working on growing its partnerships with Japanese publishers and developers in recent years. Kato in her new role will be "responsible for leading partnerships worldwide for Japanese publishers at Xbox."
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 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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This is a brilliant move.
One of the biggest issues Microsoft has with Xbox is the inability to appeal to the Japanese market, they tried with the Xbox 360 with titles like Blue Dragon, Infinite undiscovery, Final Fantasy and such, to mixed results.
Japan is a tough market to crack...
But this will also have a flow-on effect to the Americas and Europe where there are large fanbases that enjoy a good japanese title that typically opt for Sony or Nintendo consoles for those types of games.
Its the contacts that I believe MS really moved on this issue. I am sure this executive has a huge list of contacts and relationships that MS desperately needs in order to gain more traction in Japan. MS probably paying her a crap ton of money to get out their and sell MS to Japanese developers as well they should.
Even if it doesn't result in any gained marketshare in Japan (Hard ask considering the current state of things there.), the flow-on effects to other markets cannot be understated.
And despite it only being anecdotal, I know many people who opt for Nintendo consoles for a good old JRPG experience... Which just don't exist on Xbox.
Sea of Stars is also on Switch, but the Switch also gets: Saga Scarlet Grace, Dragon Slayer, The Legend of Heroes, Pokemon, Sakuna, Tokyo Mirage, Ys, Xenoblade and dozens of more.
So if you enjoyed JRPG's, you still wouldn't buy Xbox for the smaller selection, as you get so much more on Switch or even Playstation.
Ironically most of these titles end up on PC and Playstation, but tend to skip the Xbox, which shouldn't be happening with how easy it is to port games from PC to Xbox, there is a barrier there and hopefully they can resolve it.
this should have happened years ago!
Hopefully this will make a better Xbox experience in Japan and possibly abroad as well.
Xbox has consistently had massive struggles in Japan and still have not turned them around in the long run, despite some promise with Game Pass.
Xbox has to show they care about the Japanese market, which will help Japanese developers feel that Xbox is worth making games for. If Xbox is seen as just using Japanese games to sell to the world market, then Japanese dev's and gamers will feel that the Japanese market is being left behind by Xbox. It's win-win.
