Land of the rising Xbox

Nintendo, Sony and Sega have made Japan king of the game console. Can Microsoft make a dent in Nippon?

By Steve Mollman

Dec 17, 2001 | The Xbox gets a bad rap in Japan. Talk to industry watchers here and you start to draw a rather bleak picture: Japanese homes are too tiny for the oversized console. Japanese gamers stick to native brands. Japanese tastes are different -- even industry titan Electronic Arts, the biggest game publisher in the United States, has a weak presence here. "In Japan, I've never met one single person who likes the Xbox," says Arka Roy, a Tokyo-based developer.

Yes, in Japan, which accounts for about a third of the world market, the Xbox is definitely facing an uphill battle. But one thing needs to be kept in mind: It hasn't been released yet. That doesn't happen here until Feb. 22. Until the console has been available for a few months, it's probably too soon to write it off. In a Computer Entertainment Software Association poll of visitors to the spring Tokyo Game Show, answers to "What game machines do you want to buy?" came out 39.5 percent Xbox, 39.6 PS2, and 22.2 percent GameCube. Not all the signs point downward.

Still, the task of making a big American console a hit in Japan is, undeniably, a daunting one. It falls to Hirohisa "Pat" Ohura, managing director of Microsoft's Japan subsidiary. Ohura talked with Salon about the challenges and potential rewards facing Microsoft as it rolls out the Xbox in Japan.

One obvious problem with the Xbox compared with the PlayStation is that there just aren't a lot of titles, either third-party or exclusive first-party. What is Microsoft's approach to the sheer size of the PlayStation market?

Xbox is a new platform. Therefore we have zero installed base today. At launch [Feb. 22], we will have probably close to 12 to 20 titles ... Currently we have about 80 companies signed to make titles for the Japanese market. Within that 80 there are about 150 titles in development. So as the hardware reaches the users and as the installed base grows, we will have enough titles for Xbox.

The biggest thing we're trying to do with Xbox is we're trying to give our users an experience they've never had with the other [console] platforms. The graphics of the Xbox are dramatically better compared to the other platforms. One good wind that is carrying us more is the TVs inside the houses are upgrading to [satellite broadcast] digital format and the resolution is getting a lot better. Therefore the people at home can realize the power of the graphics of Xbox. The other factor is sound ... [With the Xbox] when you shoot a rocket you can hear it flying from left to right, or when playing a horror game you will sort of sense or hear someone creeping from behind you. So those are the new things we're trying to have users recognize that they cannot experience with other platforms.

Also, the fact that we have a hard disk built into every machine, which is probably the biggest reason for its size. We think it is absolutely important that this happen because we have given liberty to game creators to utilize memory in a very free way. Up until now, if we were to call the creator an artist or painter, he had a certain size screen that he could paint pictures on. So let's say he paints a family portrait on a white screen, but he says, "Oh, I forgot the dog" -- well, [in the past] he had no space to do that, and he had to do the painting all over again. But with Xbox, with the unlimited memory, he can add the dog, he can add the Christmas tree, and he can add the presents ...

The fact that Xbox supports broadband will also change online gaming itself. Up to now, the concept of online gaming was, people connect to the Net and they go in and they play a certain game. People may have a PC, a PS2, or a Dreamcast. And once they go to the server, they will have to play [down to] the lowest specification. They will have to play probably on the graphic card level of the PS2 or the Dreamcast -- even if the PC has a better graphic card. So even if you own super hardware, once you go on the Net you aren't able to utilize your power. Our thinking of online is we want to sort of make a dedicated world for Xbox where only Xbox users can go in. And we will utilize our technology that we have groomed in the Windows world, like our matchmaking service.

We'll have a sort of Passport technology. When a user plays a game, the Passport ID will [remember] their high score. The server will know, say, Steve-san is very good at action games and sports but very bad at role playing. If you were to go into a matchmaker room and ask for a partner, the server will recognize your ID and try to set you up with a very identical ID. Right now a regular matchmaking system will just call anybody who is on the floor, so you will have to play sort of a kindergarten boy who is very bad at playing games. You will not have fun, and he will not have fun. But our system will enable users to have the same level and play the game.

We want to make the world like the Disneyland world. People will come in and experience the same kind of fun every time they come into the room. The experience will always be the same. And in order to do that it was very essential for us to make a dedicated Xbox-only world.

Next Page: The challenge of going up against Sony and Nintendo on their home turf

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