While you were sleepy or getting up this morning, Xbox held their Tokyo Game Show presentation.
The digital TGS Xbox event kicked off with an announcement from Xbox boss, Phill Spencer and many guests revealing that Xbox Cloud Gaming will be available in new markets starting tomorrow on October 1st. Appropriately, that includes Japan as well as others including Mexico, Australia and Brazil. After that, Phil Spencer, thanked Japanese Xbox fans for their support and said the Japanese market “is the fastest-growing market for Xbox anywhere in the world.”
Spencer adds that Microsoft is working “every single day to increase our line-up of Japanese games” and is looking to “help bring Japanese games [to everyone] around the world.” Spencer reiterates their support for the Japanese market by revealing there have already been over 100 Japanese titles on Xbox Game Pass, 200 Japanese indie games in the ID@Xbox program, and that the company is actively working on console supply issues.
“We’re working with Japanese publishers every single day to increase our line-up of Japanese games on Xbox. We know it’s really important to fans and customers on Xbox.”
Following that is an interview with Phil Spencer and Tango Gameworks’ Shinji Mikami who reveals his insight on where the future of Japanese games is heading. That future really is in mind at the studio as Makami reveals that they’re looking to give young talent a chance to pitch and create new concepts.
Their approach has led to the release of Ghostwire: Tokyo, directed by Kenji Kimura who was a young talent who pitched the idea of the game with another example being John Johanas, director of The Evil Within 2. Makami adds on what Johanas is up and he simply states that he is “hard at work at a new game” but did not elaborate any further.
Getting back onto the Xbox Game Pass train, Xbox revealed a series of trailers highlighting just some new Japanese-developed additions coming to the service. After its release this past June, Scarlet Nexus is coming to Game Pass starting today, which the publisher initially denied months ago. There are more additions as well including Mighty Goose and Ai: The Somnium Files, which is a very good game and if you’re a Game Pass subscriber you have no excuse to not play it. Other upcoming Game ass titles coming this year include Back 4 Blood, Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite.
On that note, various developers announced that they’re looking to include full Japanese localization at launch. One of those developers includes Harvey Smith of Arkane Studios, who says they are looking to include a full Japanese voice cast in Redfall when it launches next year in the summer.
Todd Howard of Bethesda adds that the studio is looking to include Japanese text and voices to Starfield. He adds that it’s looking to be Bethesda’s “largest translation ever” with “over 300 actors and 150,000 lines of dialogue.” For comparison sake for the number of dialogue lines in Bethesda’s past games, Fallout 4 had 110,000 lines while Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim had 60,000 lines which means Starfield is about more than double the number.
After that, we got a trailer from The ID@Xbox team that highlights Asia indie games arriving on Xbox Game Pass through the program. We got also got a look at some of the Japanese and Korean indie titles including Craftopia, RPG Time, Mighty Goose, Lapin and Unsouled. Also revealed in that list includes Swery’s The Good Life which is getting an exclusive Xbox Demo starting today and Eternal Return which got a new trailer before it releases on the Microsoft Store on October 19th.
