On the heels its Xbox 360 console’s record- breaking sales performance over Black Friday weekend in the U.S., outselling Sony’s PlayStation 3 by a three-to-one ratio and a 25 percent increase from Xbox 360 Black Friday sales figures from 2007, Microsoft said Wednesday that the Japanese market is an “interesting challenge.” Speaking in an interview at the Reuters Media Summit, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Strategy and Business Development Shane Kim explained the company’s focus on the Xbox 360 internationally. “We continue to focus tremendously internationally. Europe in particular is very big area of focus for us, Japan has always been an important market for us,” Kim said. “That’s an interesting challenge because we’re competing with Sony and Nintendo on their home turf there, but we’ve enjoyed greater success recently with Xbox 360 outselling the competition in many cases.” “We’re seeing greater third-party support from Japanese publishers, which also helps with Japanese content.” “We’re going to continue to grow internationally because, again, we want to build on that core gaming base that we’ve established from the previous generation,” he said. Read the full article