Microsoft is hoping to some day have a giant first-party presence in Japan.
In order to bolster its first-party output, Microsoft has been lately investing lots into builders. The firm purchased and established eight new studios, extra lately acquiring Double Fine.
All of that is a part of the platform holder’s quest to safe extra content material to make Game Pass extra fascinating, and to supply experiences not discovered on different platforms. Unfortunately, all of those are Western groups. Though the acquisitions are plentiful, Microsoft says it could not but have had its fill.
Speaking to Games Industry at E3, head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, likened the corporate’s strategy to that of Netflix.
“I think [Netflix has] done a very good job of investing into where they see the business is going,” mentioned Spencer.
“For us as Microsoft, it is one of the things about having the support of the company behind us. You can look at our P&L of our company; we’re not spending $12 billion on video games today, but as the subscriptions grow and reach more customers, I do think it’s important for us to continue to invest in content. It’s not every year that we’ll add seven new studios, but I do think us looking at specific targets that we need is important.”
The govt added that Microsoft is actually not carried out, revealing that he’d like one in every of these future acquisitions to be an Asian studio. “I think it would be nice if we found an Asian studio, in particular a Japanese studio, to add [to our studios],” he mentioned.
“I favored it after we had some first-party functionality in Japan. We have a small group there, however I feel we are able to do extra.
“That mentioned, by means of our journeys to Japan, I really like having Phantasy Star again on our stage with Sega — I believed that was unbelievable. Miyazaki-San, earlier than with Dark Souls and now having Elden Ring on our stage… the Japanese creators have proven up increasingly more.”
The presence of Japanese games on Microsoft’s E3 stage has actually shot up these previous few years, however that solely does a lot when most of those games find yourself releasing on all platforms. Wile it’s a huge deal that games like Sekiro, Elden Ring, Dragon Ball FighterZ and others had been launched by Xbox, loads of others snub the platform fully.
Hopefully, even when Spencer doesn’t get his want, Japanese games can discover a greater viewers on Xbox.
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