I guess the Xbox Team is serious about wanting more Asian and Japanese developers onboard late this gen and next-gen according to recent interviews. Despite the longing for more Japanese first-party games hitting up the green brand, how will the team handle lewd or spicy content when its competitor Sony is implementing SJW policies?
As it stands now, there are many skeptics out in the wild saying that the Xbox Team will butcher and mishandle any first-party title from the land of the rising sun. While we wait for the results (or damage), it seems that both Phil Spencer and Matt Booty are determined to get more Eastern devs on their side to churn out first-party titles.
The last time we reported on the Xbox Team’s Japanese fever was back on November 16th when videogameschronicle.com came forth with the following information when interviewing Spencer:
“I think we have a hole in Asia. I’ve said that both to Matt Booty and publicly. I would love to have more of an influence in our own first-party team from Asian creators. There’s nothing that’s imminent, so it’s not a pre-announce of something. But if you just plotted where we are on the map with our first-party, that’s a real opportunity for us.
I love the fact we can stand here and announce Yakuza and Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy coming. That’s through third-party relationships, which take time. And we’ve been really focused on that. But I think we could have stronger first-party creation capability there. We have in the past and I think we should again.”
Fast forward to December 21st, 2019, and website gameinformer.com has a piece up covering Microsoft acknowledging it has a hole in one region, and that is Asia.
When the website asked Spencer would he consider publishing, he took that up as a possibility but feels that first-party developers are still the key to the problem:
“Sure, we could do publishing relationships there, and we might do that; I think that’s fine. In fact, I would suspect we will do some of those, but I also think as we continue to evolve our platform, having a first-party studio voice at the table that is from Asia, whether it’s Japan or another market, would be a good add for us.”
The plan right now, according to the Xbox Team, is to bring more third-party games to the platform much like the Yakuza games, Kingdom Hearts, and Final Fantasy. However, the team is using this initiative to move to first-party titles in the foreseeable future.
With the amount of determination behind the green brand wanting a foothold in Japan or other places nearby underlines that it will happen one day. The true question behind this move is, how much social justice content will surface in these games, and will the Xbox Team censor and spread the usual stuff throughout these first-party titles?