SNK Playmore USA's honcho Ben Herman provided a good lay of the land in the current console battle. While the Xbox 360 certainly is costing off a strong E3 showing, things might not be gumdrops and lollypops. Mr. Herman's fairly blunt about the situation, saying:

Some of the publishers have made some very attractive games in Japanese but it still has not sold. PS3 is coming, and certainly, even though it is very expensive. The reality is that the Japanese market will support Sony. I don't know what Microsft is going to do but a lot of publishers who have to invest lots of money to make the game are going to look at it and say, "well, I have the United States, I have Europe, and I have nothing—-Japan." Whereas they are going to look at PS3 and say "I've got Japan, U.S.A., and Europe." If you've got to spend five or ten million dollars to develop a high-definition game, to be honest, you'd like to have one that can sell in all markets.

The Japanese video game industry has traditionally looked at itself as a domestic business. This of course has changed and rapidly continues to do so as Japanese companies actively cater to an international market. But, does that mean Microsoft must do the same? —Brian Ashcraft

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