Xbox 360 Courts the Japanese at TGS

Microsoft persists in its efforts to win over the Japanese market at the Tokyo Game Show this week.

If there's anything Microsoft can do to win over the Japanese public, it seems that it as least willing to give it a go. And it was with this in mind that new Xbox boss Takashi Sensui on Wednesday regaled a packed conference hall at the monolithic Cerulean Tower in Tokyo's hip Shibuya neighbourhood.

Microsoft's message for the day, and in fact its message for the Xbox 360 as a whole, revolved around do! do! do! That is, do Choice!, do Live!, do Games! - the three prongs of the company's attack on Japan's gaming populace.

Choice for Japanese would-be Xbox 360 owners is finally a reality, now that Microsoft has decided to introduce the lower-priced Xbox 360 Core system - that's the one without a hard drive - in Japan, bring the price barrier down further still, beyond its already impressive lows.

Breaking into the Japanese market is a hard gig, and to do that Microsoft is subsidising its hardware even more than it is in the West, allowing people to pick up the Core system for a ridiculously low ¥29,800 (around £), and that price covers two announced bundles too, including either Final Fantasy father Hironobu Sakaguchi's new RPG Blue Dragon (released in mid-December) or Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Dynasty Warriors-esque Ninety-Nine Nights.

Games are becoming more numerous in Japan, too. There will be more than 100 games available here by the end of the year, up from under 70 now, and many of those are exclusive to Japan. That number includes games in the Xbox Live Arcade, which is being bolstered by additions from Japanese developers: Gyruss, Rush 'N' Attack, Ms Pac-Man, New Rally X, and the Japan-only Yie Ar Kung Fu.

Speaking of Pac-Man, the game's creator Toru Iwatani, attended the show too. Fresh from his recent placement at the Tokyo Polytechnic University, where he'll be teaching game design, Iwatani joined Microsoft's Peter Moore in announcing the Pac-Man World Championship. The competition will scan the globe for the best player, with the 10 best being flown to a live tournament where they'll face off for fame and fortune.

Though games were an important part of Microsoft's appeal to the Japanese, it was not the only constituent. Also announced at the event were the final details for the HD DVD drive. This is an external drive that allows next-generation movies of the HD DVD persuasion to be played on Xbox, and all in glorious 1080p - or full HD, as Sony likes to call it. This will sell in Japan for a measly ¥20,790 (£). The audience was treated to a demo of The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift, naturally, which showed off some of the interesting bookmarking and picture-in-picture features of the format.

Unlike Sony's event later in the week, though, Microsoft stayed mostly on message during its press briefing, and true to form the event was concluded with a showing of the two biggest games in the offing for the Xbox 360 - Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, both by Hironobu Sakaguchi. Instead of the usual announce-and-hide strategy many Japanese developers take, Sakaguchi took the somewhat unusual step of playing around 10 minutes of each game for the audience.

And it was this that best characterised Microsoft's press conference - it's desire to please, and to cosy up to the Japanese public. It's too soon to tell whether the company will be successful, or if, like the Xbox before it, the Xbox 360 will fail miserably. One thing you can't fault Microsoft with is not trying.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games