Following widespread reports of hardware issues following the North American Xbox 360, Microsoft Japan is assuring gamers it will quickly deal with faulty units of the next-gen console, which goes on sale Saturday.

　　Talking to Famitsu, Yoshihiro Maruyama, general manager of Microsoft Japan's Xbox division, commented that hardware problems plague most consoles at launch. Without going into specifics, he said his company would do its best efforts to respond to any faulty consoles.

　　Microsoft Japan saw problems when the original Xbox launched in the country in 2002, as some early units scratched game discs. The company initially declined to replace the units, since the issue "does not cause disks to become unreadable." During the console's first two weeks on the market, 590 reports of defective consoles were filed. Eventually, Microsoft Japan relented, announcing it would replace any problematic Xboxes and scratched discs sent in by customers.

　　Maruyama also spoke to Famitsu about the delay of Dead or Alive 4, expressing his regret that the game will miss Xbox 360's launch. While he admitted that arriving on schedule would be best, he also said he respects the developers if they believe additional time would deliver a better game. Echoing the line taken by his American colleagues, Maruyama defined the 360's "launch period" as being the first three months after its release.

　　In an additional interview with Xbox360ism (a special edition of Dorimaga), Maruyama said that he believes that Microsoft has a chance of winning in the Japanese game market. As an example, Maruyama pointed out how Nintendo once used to be the uncontested king of the console market, but is now in second place in Japan and third place internationally."

　　"In the past, Nintendo was overwhelmingly strong, and other machines that were around during the time, like the Jaguar or the NeoGeo, all went away," said Maruyama. "Back then, I thought that the PlayStation and Saturn would also disappear after the Nintendo 64 came out. But that didn't happen. The market flipped. We believe that's the kind of thing that we can accomplish. If we didn't, we wouldn't be doing this. Of course, it is not going to be easy."