Xbox production head Aaron Greenberg has claimed that the Japanese games publishing market has undergone a “tremendous shift” towards Xbox 360, with third-party publishers now looking to the Microsoft machine to get out of Japan and into the West.
“I think there’s been a tremendous shift,” he told Major Nelson after the first day of Tokyo Game Show.
“Never before have I seen in the eight years I’ve been coming to TGS, this shift, frankly, from the PlayStation brand to Xbox 360 among third-party publishers. We’re the platform they’re looking to to help grow their franchises around the world.”
Greenberg added that Japanese 360 sales have rocketed year-on-year, thanks, he said, to price-cutting and RPG exclusivity.
“What’s interesting of late is the amazing momentum we’ve seen coming out of the Japanese market,” he said. “Our sales are up year-over-year: last month’s sales were up 500 percent. We not only saw tremendous sales growth; we outsold PS3 for the entire month, week after week.
“While we’ve had tremendous success globally, I don’t think anyone anticipated we’d see the kind of sales results we have seen in Japan, and I think it’s the result of great content and great pricing.
“We’ve had big, exclusive RPG one after another, and the great thing is that we’ve shown that not only have we launched things like Tales of Vesperia and Infinite Undiscovery, but we’ve got The Last Remnant coming next month, we’ve got Star Ocean 4 coming only to Xbox 360 starting in spring.
“So for Japanese consumers here, and for Japanese publishers, we’ve never had the type of line-up that we have here.”
There’s an audio interview with Greenberg through the link. Have a listen.
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