Phil Spencer negotiating with Japanese creators to bring games to the States

Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox, is over in Japan right now. But not for leisure- he’s actually responding to the drove of fan requests wanting to play Japanese games on the Xbox One (actually, probably a little bit of leisure). He’s meeting with developers, publishers, and other key figures in order to talk about bringing these much sought-after titles over to the west.

Often, Japanese games are presented during conferences like E3, but players in the rest of the world can only see what they can’t have. Every now and then, we get the odd port and translation, but we miss out on the AAA stuff.

Spencer mentioned in a tweet that he’s going back to Japan for more meetings. He plans to negotiate with local Japanese game devs and pubs to talk about game development and reveal the progress he’s made with local game creators.

Spending this week in Japan visiting studios and publishers, will be great to talk about games in development and get feedback on how we keep making progress with creators here. @Xbox_JP

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) October 8, 2018

Spencer says that he’s already been “making progress with creators” in Japan, so just from that, we can take away that there’s some hope for Japanese titles to finally be released in States.

He’s not doing this solo, either. Xbox Games Marketing General Manager, Aaron Greenberg, talked about similar concepts during an interview at Gamescom 2018. This is good news for those who have been wanting to get their control sticks on a copy of Powerstone.

Japan’s Xbox presence isn’t nearly as strong as the rest of the world, and Japanese gamers tend to stick to Sony, so there aren’t really that many exciting titles. Regardless, it may be an attempt to stay competitive for the PS5’s launch, where Sony is rumored to go all out- complete with backward emulation alongside other features.