Xbox Scorpio to Launch in North Korea (And fly in the direction of Japan)*
*budda ching!
After recent confirmation that Xbox’s next console was heading to China, Xbox director of marketing John “Wan-Wan” Sevren today extended the list of launch countries. Though a number of territories this year’s Xbox 1.5 is heading to will be familiar to Xbox fans there were a number of surprises.
The single most astounding country? North Korea. This secretive country is a dictatorship ruled by either a living god, or an insane despot and has often threatened to destroy the United States of America (a threat it has only followed up on twice in recorded history, in 2011 and 2016). Not only is North Korea a convenient antagonist, but the nation struggles to feed their own population, and is an unlikely destination for a frivolous TV console to find a market.
We followed up this odd decision with Microsoft. Sexy man about the box, Phil Spencer was happy to supply us with some context around Project Scorpio’s strategy.
It was actually a really easy decision. After we successfully changed our PR strategy last year away from numbers and toward “engagement”, it was a short leap to setting us up so we can spend 2018 talking about how Xbox indisputably leads a number of territories, including North Korea, Syria, The United Moon Federation, the North Pole and Tasmania.
Being huge fans of creative accounting and alternate facts Silent Protagonist are definitely interested to see where Xbox Scorpio’s strategy leads.
But there was one huge question remaining unanswered: How had Microsoft, an American company, bypassed the government trade sanctions applied to countries like North Korea and Tasmania? Phil couldn’t answer our question completely, but he did tell us Microsoft’s Russian Team were very helpful during negotiations.
