lɐuǝɯo⊥ǝɥԀ
05-07-2009, 10:09 PM
Being the chief executive behind the Xbox's Japanese operations can be an utterly thankless job. Just ask Hirohisa "Pat" Ohura. Who? Exactly. He was the guy who engineered the original Xbox's February 2002 release; by November 2002, he was called back to Redmond after the Xbox's monthly sales had to be measured by the hundreds.
Takashi Sensui, Microsoft general manager and the man who's taken the Japan Xbox reins since 2006, was there to feel the pain in '02. "I joined Microsoft right after the original Xbox was released, so I wasn't involved with the launch of the first one," he said in a retrospective interview this week with Famitsu magazine. "I started work just before we discounted it for the first time, and I was like 'Whoa, we're dropping the price already?!'."
Realizing that the Xbox was facing a more-than-a-bit-uphill battle against Sony and Nintendo, Microsoft acted fast, dropping the console's price by 30 percent only three months after launch and giving gamers who paid full-cost a choice of games and accessories as consolation. "We called it the 'Thank You Campaign,' but it was really more of a 'Sorry About That Campaign,'" Sensui joked in the interview. "To put it in a nice way, it was a very novel promotion; to put it in a not-so-nice way, it went against how the industry worked in every possible manner. We wanted to give something back to the users who bought in early with us, but we didn't have any of the industry knowledge required to know how best to do this. No matter which way you look at it, it was certainly a surprising deal."
Sensui and Microsoft realized that succeeding in Japan would take a little more than Bill Gates smiling on Japanese TV and making an appearance at the launch event. Sensui, as then-director of marketing, was one of the executives who laid out the Xbox's long-term plan in Asia. "The original Xbox came out 2002 , but we had already started moving on the 360 by the following year," he told Famitsu. "We talked with developers and spent a great deal of time discussing how we could make the 360 something that could satisfy gamers. The 360 has a wide range of large-scale RPGs in its library now, something that started with Blue Dragon, but I don't think that would have been possible without those discussions. Releasing all those huge projects took more time than we planned, but I definitely believe we did the right thing with them."
Nowadays, the Xbox 360 is finally beginning to fill out the (admittedly low) expectations Microsoft had for it in Japan. The company shifted its millionth console in the region last month, and hardware sales have continually expanded year-over-year since the 2005 launch. "I really feel like we're expanding now," Sensui closed. "It's selling in a way that consoles never sold before. Back in the day, hardware would sell a huge inventory at launch and then quickly settle down, but seeing how the 360 has expanded its sales every year makes me very happy. I truly appreciate the support of the users and the perseverance of all the game developers that made it possible."
[I]
1UP
Takashi Sensui, Microsoft general manager and the man who's taken the Japan Xbox reins since 2006, was there to feel the pain in '02. "I joined Microsoft right after the original Xbox was released, so I wasn't involved with the launch of the first one," he said in a retrospective interview this week with Famitsu magazine. "I started work just before we discounted it for the first time, and I was like 'Whoa, we're dropping the price already?!'."
Realizing that the Xbox was facing a more-than-a-bit-uphill battle against Sony and Nintendo, Microsoft acted fast, dropping the console's price by 30 percent only three months after launch and giving gamers who paid full-cost a choice of games and accessories as consolation. "We called it the 'Thank You Campaign,' but it was really more of a 'Sorry About That Campaign,'" Sensui joked in the interview. "To put it in a nice way, it was a very novel promotion; to put it in a not-so-nice way, it went against how the industry worked in every possible manner. We wanted to give something back to the users who bought in early with us, but we didn't have any of the industry knowledge required to know how best to do this. No matter which way you look at it, it was certainly a surprising deal."
Sensui and Microsoft realized that succeeding in Japan would take a little more than Bill Gates smiling on Japanese TV and making an appearance at the launch event. Sensui, as then-director of marketing, was one of the executives who laid out the Xbox's long-term plan in Asia. "The original Xbox came out 2002 , but we had already started moving on the 360 by the following year," he told Famitsu. "We talked with developers and spent a great deal of time discussing how we could make the 360 something that could satisfy gamers. The 360 has a wide range of large-scale RPGs in its library now, something that started with Blue Dragon, but I don't think that would have been possible without those discussions. Releasing all those huge projects took more time than we planned, but I definitely believe we did the right thing with them."
Nowadays, the Xbox 360 is finally beginning to fill out the (admittedly low) expectations Microsoft had for it in Japan. The company shifted its millionth console in the region last month, and hardware sales have continually expanded year-over-year since the 2005 launch. "I really feel like we're expanding now," Sensui closed. "It's selling in a way that consoles never sold before. Back in the day, hardware would sell a huge inventory at launch and then quickly settle down, but seeing how the 360 has expanded its sales every year makes me very happy. I truly appreciate the support of the users and the perseverance of all the game developers that made it possible."
[I]
1UP