Phil Spencer: “Xbox Playtime In Japan Has Increased By Around 20%”

At no surprise really, Xbox performs the worst compared to Nintendo & Sony. Despite the home field advantage, the Xbox firm has continued to push for an audience in the territory. Previously, Microsoft has touted that PC Game Pass has faced major growth in Asia. Additionally, just this past February it was also disclosed that the same region faced the fastest growth for Xbox Cloud Gaming too.

However, other actions by Microsoft has also left some questions. Despite originally celebrating the addition of Tango Gameworks in 2020, Microsoft went ahead shuttering the Japanese game studio by 2024. In another perspective, there is a lot of good the Xbox company has also done for Japan in gaming. Such as the most recent release of Ninja Gaiden 4 which Xbox Game Studios published.

Now recently, it was revealed that Xbox is facing at least a 1/5th in increased activity from the nation of Japan. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer revealed this new metric in an interview with Famitsu. He shares that “total Xbox playtime in Japan has increased by around 20% in the past year.”

Spencer also injects: “If I had to point out one thing, it seems to me that the importance of PC is increasingly growing for our Japanese players. Furthermore, the fact that console, PC, and cloud are all growing aligns with our strategy of wanting players to enjoy Xbox regardless of device,” the translation from Automaton reads.

And there is more games that Xbox plans to bankroll coming out of Japan as it faces an incline in users. One of Hideo Kojima’s next projects ‘OD’ is still underway. At Tokyo Game Show, a new teaser for the project was revealed. You can view the full report by heading here.

Are you surprised there has been better activity for Xbox in Japan?