Former Xbox Executive Robbie Bach recently revealed to IGN that Microsoft might have spent too much time trying to market the original Xbox to Japan, especially after the region was unresponsive.
“It’s just a question of focus,” former Microsoft executive Robbie Bach told IGN Unfiltered. “And it’s a question of where you have assets and where you don’t have assets. And we had no assets in Japan.”
Bach went on to say that the company’s focus on the region actually may have in turn compromised how well they were doing in the west.
“It distracted us from things where we actually had an opportunity to make progress,” he said. Bach added that the original Microsoft console was, in general, difficult to market and sell for the company.
“I always tell people, [the original Xbox market is] the only market I’ve ever been in where we had negative market share,” Bach said, adding that “360 was better, but [original] Xbox was really hard.”
If he could go back and change anything, Bach said he would have done “just enough” to maintain a presence in Japan but overall, would have “probably spent a little less time on it.”
The next console from Microsoft is right around the corner, the Xbox One S releasing on August 2, with the more powerful console, code named “Scorpio” releasing sometime next year.