GATES KEYNOTE HIGHLIGHTS
March 29, 2001

As part of an attempt to win over the Japanese market, Bill Gates gave the keynote speech at the Tokyo Game Show. Among the highlights of the speech were:

• New controller. Based on feedback from Japanese gamers, and on the fact that they believed that no one controller could please all gamers, Microsoft has unveiled a special controller just for the Japanese market. The controller is smaller than the other one, and the buttons have been repositioned.
• 1st party Japanese developer. Microsoft has started internal development within Japan in order to create and translate games that will appeal to the Japanese market. It also manages developer relations in Japan. The division currently has 70 employees and is led by Toshiyuki Miyata, formerly of Sony Computer Entertainment. He demonstrated Project K-X (tenative title), an Xbox fighting game.
• Japanese developer support. Microsoft currently has more than 70 Japanese developers supporting the Xbox.
• Sega support. 11 games currently in development.
• Alliance with NTT Communications. It appears that NTT and Microsoft hope Xbox will do for the Japanese broadband market what the PS2 did for the Japanese DVD market.