The biggest announcement at the four-day Tokyo Game Show 2008 (Oct. 9-12) at Makuhari Messe convetion center in Chiba Prefecture was not for a Japanese title and not by a Japanese company.
On the first of the two press days, Microsoft exec John Schappert announced the Xbox 360 title "Halo 3: Recon," a game that was rumored to have been pulled from Microsoft's announcement lineup earlier this year at the Los Angeles game-industry event E3. "Halo 3: Recon" is an expansion of the wildly popular first-person-shooter "Halo 3," and will be out in North America next fall. While Microsoft's "Halo" franchise is a juggernaut among Western gamers, the series has had a tepid reception at best in Japan, where first-person-shooters aren't as popular. The reason for announcing such a Western-centric title at a Japanese event was simple: Free press.
Microsoft has traditionally had a tough time in the Japanese market. When the console launched in 2005, unsold Xbox 360s collected dust on store shelves. Japanese gamers griped that the games were "too Western" and didn't appeal to their tastes. It was a dreadful repeat of what followed the Japan release of the original Xbox in 2002.