American Game Companies Target Asia

Thanks to the BBC and GamesIndustry.biz for their stories on American game company expansions into Asia. Electronic Arts is opening a dev studio in China, hoping to open up the world's largest market to online gaming. PCBang style internet cafes are rapidly becoming big business there. Microsoft, on the other hand, is getting serious about the Japanese market. Their next gen console is already being hyped to Japanese developers. The form factor and design are going to take into account Japanese tastes, as will their marketing campaign. The next Xbox may offer Japanese and American consumers a fascinating new feature as well, with Bill Gates himself confirming the development of spectator mode for the Xbox. It's unclear whether that would be rolled out for the current Xbox console, or will have to wait until their next product.

Comments

Re:Raises hand...

[Spoing]

1. the only game i've seen that has a real spectator mode is ghost recon... ghost recon allows you to just ghost people... you dont have to pick a team or anything... oh yeah, RTCW has this also...

I guess I'm spoiled. Savage has a really nice spectator mode as well as a unique commander mode and other views of the game.

At any time, pressing TAB brings up the player stats per team, and with SEP (Savage Enhancement Project). While playing the game, pressing Alt and Ctrl bring up team damage details and current tech available. Quite nifty.

Import

[Gamelore]

Similar to how Japanese companies release anime in the US for less than half the price in Japan, with the Japanese track included, perhaps these publishers will leave the original English language option in the Chinese versions.

I've already seen quite a few "legit" Thai versions of games on ebay for like $18 when the US retail price is still $50.