Microsoft: Sarah Bond on investing in the Japanese market

Sarah Bond talks about the Japanese market and what investments to make to improve your position there.

As is well known, Microsoft has always had a hard time gaining a foothold in Japan. This is reflected most clearly in hardware sales figures. In 20 years, only 2.3 million consoles were sold there, as reported in March of this year.

However, the manufacturer of Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S is not giving up. This was confirmed in an interview with the Washington Post.

Sarah Bond, Xbox corporate vice president of game creator experience and ecosystem, said it’s been a long road and will continue to do so.

With further investments in the Japanese market, they want to show that Xbox is more than just Halo and Forza. According to Bond, 250 developers have already developed 150 games that appear on the Xbox platform. These include Craftopia and Tetris Effect: Connected. The Ni No Kuni series for Xbox was announced at the Tokyo Game Show. The first part, Ni No Kuni: The Curse of the White Queen Remastered, is already playable and even included in Xbox Game Pass.

“We invest in both the depth and breadth of the titles found on our platform, and that’s exactly how reputation is built. We’re seeing that because of Game Pass, game developers are more willing to take risks because they know they’ll be more able to find an audience. Someone will fall in love with something that isn’t necessarily a big brand name but offers a really, really delightful gaming experience.”

Competitor Sony will still have the edge in Japan with its PlayStation 5. Analyst Piers Harding-Rolls agrees. He says Microsoft is now “more competitive than it has been in at least a decade” and that “Microsoft’s approach to the market is paying off.”

As previously heard from Xbox boss Phil Spencer, Bond also admits mistakes made when the Xbox One was launched.

“When we were talking about the Xbox One launch, there were a lot of things that we know we didn’t get right. It took a long time for us to learn from our mistakes and really apply them to continue to grow both our hardware, our product range and our relationships with developers.”

According to Bond, building a base of players in Japan takes time

“One generation of hardware is a long time to develop all this technology. It’s a five to seven year process to bring that forward. Building relationships takes a lot of time. And developing a true AAA game can — we’ve seen it take up to six years to develop an AAA game.”

Microsoft will bring the Persona game series to the Xbox platform and they are working on a new game with Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima. And who knows what other plans Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond have concocted with developers at the Tokyo Game Show to improve the future of Xbox in Japan and the rest of the world.

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