Microsoft have announced that Xbox will be at Tokyo Game Show once again this year, revealing that the company has prepared a 50-minute presentation that will air online on September 30th at 6PM JST / 5AM EST / 10AM BST.
Video Games Chronicle has translated the Tokyo Game Show schedule, which describes the event as follows:
“Jump in and join Xbox as we bring our gaming ecosystem gaming to the world,” the event description reads. “We have some exclusive news and content to share and Tokyo Game Show 2021 is our stage.”
Xbox has struggled to get a foothold in the Japanese market for almost 20 years, but they have still continued to treat it as an important market despite that. When the Xbox purchase of Bethesda finalised in March 2021 and they held a roundtable event with key figures, Xbox head Phil Spencer said that he was most excited to visit Japan and Shinji Mikami’s Tango Gameworks studio and get to know them.
What moves have Xbox Game Studios been making in Japan in the run up to Tokyo Game Show 2021?
The creator of Resident Evil and his studio Tango Gameworks are currently hard at work on the PS5 timed-exclusive Ghostwire Tokyo thanks to a holdover contract from before Bethesda was purchased. Their future software releases will no doubt be exclusives for Xbox and Windows PC going forward.
With a new local studio in Tango, good relationships with SEGA, Bandai Namco and Capcom, the small form factor of the Xbox Series S console and powerful cloud streaming technology, they obviously hope to finally gain some ground in the region.
In August 2021, Sony didn’t have a single piece of software in the Japanese Top 30 and there is a growing sentiment among Japanese game players online that PlayStation have been becoming too western since they moved their head offices to America. They are obviously feeling a lack of first party attention in the area, which can only have been made worse by the exodus of talent from Japan Studio.
Nintendo Switch is currently dominating the games industry in the region, but that could easily change with the right software, industry partnerships and momentum from word of mouth.
When is the TGS 2021?
Tokyo Game Show 2021 is between September 30, 2021 — October 3, 2021. It is a four day event that will include a total of 44 presentations from video game companies that are part of the Japanese market.
How to watch TGS 2021
You can watch the Tokyo Game Show on their official YouTube channel, although we can’t promise any of it will be subtitled. We have no doubt that Japanese studios and their publishers will upload video content to their own video channels shortly after they appear at the show, so keep an eye out for the things you’re interested in over the four days.
When we know what the Xbox Tokyo Game Show exclusive news is, we’ll let you know.
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