Sakaguchi Joji is a marketing head at Microsoft Japan. He answered the following questions following the recent 1 million sales milestone for the Xbox360, in the 1067th issue of Famitsu Weekly.
Famitsu : Sensui-san has already shown it, but inside Japan, the Xbox 360 has reached the breakthrough number of 1 million sales. Congratulations !
Sakaguchi Joji : Thank you very much. That is also due to the support of everyone.
Famitsu : Was 1 million an objective of yours ?
Sakaguchi Joji : It is, in a way, just a checkpoint, however it was a big aim as well. Our objective from the beginning was to sell more than the first Xbox. For the first iteration, we can't say we were successful. In the meantime, a fair preparation was needed to make the next iteration come out. In Japan, there are really no examples of failed brands which try again and succeed.
Famitsu : The brand positionning is indeed strong in japan.Do the headquarters in American realise it ?
Sakaguchi Joji : That has been discussed many times. We even talked about not using the Xbox brand name, only in Japan. However, for Microsoft, Xbox is a gaming brand, and since we also had a passion for it, we were very much decided to "definitely make it succeed", and we launched it under the Xbox 360 name just like outside of Japan.
Famitsu : So there was a possibility to have a different name for the hardware in Japan ?
Sakaguchi Joji : We did different tests and had one option in the end, so there was a chance it happened.
Famitsu : I see.
Sakaguchi Joji : When we overtook the sales number of the first Xbox, we were very happy. And deeply moved.
Famitsu : So, you achieved a breakthrough with 1 million sales. Now lets look back a little. First at the time when the Xbox 360 launched. The first numbers were not really satisfying, right ?
Sakaguchi Joji : That's right. Right at launch it wasn't good. At the same time, I was representing the first party titles. "At the launch of the new hardware, there are very few first party titles, what should we do?" was a widespread comment.
Famitsu : If we compare the numbers of first party titles available at time of launch with the first Xbox launch, it was fairly less for the Xbox 360.
Sakaguchi Joji : Truly, from the launch timing, it would have been ideal to give a good impression to consumers by having a abondant number of softs. Anyway, because of the new hardware, the development did not go smoothly. On the other hand, a fairly good number of softs were already moving forward, and we entered the situation where we had to choose which softs to use to plan the come-back.
Famitsu : The RPG line-up was massive. On the first Xbox there was almost nothing of the kind. "Blue Dragon" was a big title used to show the power of the Xbox 360.
Sakaguchi Joji : I still cannot forget the time when we were shown "Blue Dragon" . The first time I saw it, I thought it was a prerender. But Sakaguchi-san told me it ran in real-time. Without thinking. I told him "are you kidding me ??" (laugh).
Famitsu : (laughs)
Sakaguchi Joji : I asked many things, and I did not know that they did technological exchanges with the team behind "ages of empires". "Blue Dragon" used and optimised the water algorythm from "ages of empires". I was really surprised to hear that.
Famitsu : The success of "Blue Dragon" had an influence on the other companies, right ?
Sakaguchi Joji : To be able to get the support from big japanese soft makers was a important Keyword for us. We were working with the mindset of how much we would be successful in Japan, I talked about that for a long time, and finally the flower bloomed last year.
Famitsu : Last year, since the launch of "Tales of Vesperia", many RPGs came out.
Sakaguchi Joji : The level of perfection of Japanese RPGs being high, I sensed that gamers were very excited about them, and longed for information about these titles. It was like they wanted to enjoy them as much as possible. The Xbox 360 gamers are not simply playing, they are honestly happy.
Posts
