Microsoft’s Shane Kim: Xbox Brand can still Perform in Japan

Microsoft’s Shane Kim spoke recently with Wired on everything Xbox, including its competitors and the current overheating issues plaguing Xbox 360 owners. The interview also brought to light how the company plans on handling the situation in Japan, where the Xbox 360 is found at the bottom of the sales charts week to week.

“I still am a believer in our ability to do well in Japan,” Kim stated. “We’re not going to win in Japan. We know that. That was never our goal, this generation, to win in Japan. We can win this generation without winning Japan. But we can do well in Japan. Now that’s going to take a long time.”

The company has found new perks in the Japanese software sector, most notably landing Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi-san to sculpt Blue Dragon, a traditional turn-based RPG built from the ground up exclusively for the Xbox 360. “Every major Japanese publisher is creating and publishing titles for Xbox 360. And that wasn’t the case with the original Xbox. And eventually they’re going to start putting their major Japanese content, more and more, on Xbox 360. And it won’t cost them much more to do that. These guys are publishers, they need to make money,” he claimed.

“So leveraging their content across multiple platforms is their business model; they’re going to bring more of their great Japanese content to Xbox 360, we’re going to do the things we need to do from a service standpoint, and we’re going to start to do better from a consumer standpoint. But where it’s really paying off for us is on the content side.”

To read the full interview, click the link provided below.