{"id":1098442,"date":"2026-01-26T16:52:43","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T16:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=507655"},"modified":"2026-01-26T16:52:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T16:52:43","slug":"the-xbox-game-that-made-microsoft-apologize-to-the-saudi-arabian-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/the-xbox-game-that-made-microsoft-apologize-to-the-saudi-arabian-government\/","title":{"rendered":"The Xbox game that made Microsoft apologize to the Saudi Arabian government"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In early 2003, Kate Edwards found herself sitting at the offices of newspaper Al Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, preparing to apologize on Microsoft\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n

\u201cLarge room,\u201d Edwards says. \u201cBig round table in the room. No windows or anything. There was a couple of guards standing at the door.\u201d<\/p>\n

As she sat with two local Microsoft colleagues, she tried to remember what she\u2019d discussed days before with international senior public relations director Ricardo Adame.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Say this<\/em>. Don\u2019t say this<\/em>. Be careful about this<\/em>.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Edwards was the head of Microsoft\u2019s geopolitical strategy team, a group built to keep \u2014 or in this case, get \u2014 the company out of trouble when its teams produced content that could upset people from different cultures. Disputed map borders. Misrepresented flags. Hand symbols that change meaning by territory. Anything that could trigger a backlash.<\/p>\n

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<\/h2>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

This week on Polygon, we\u2019re looking at how cultural differences affect media in a special issue we\u2019re calling Culture Shock<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In the weeks leading up to the meeting, Microsoft offended Muslims because its Xbox game Kakuto Chojin: Back Alley Brutal<\/em> used verses taken from the Islamic holy book the Quran in its soundtrack, and Edwards had flown in to meet not just with newspaper staff, but with representatives of the Saudi Arabian government\u2019s Council of Ministers.<\/p>\n

An \u201centourage\u201d of five people entered, Edwards says, three dressed in traditional Saudi clothing, one of them wearing gold and carrying a legal pad. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey sat across from us, and there were no introductions made,\u201d Edwards says. \u201cWe\u2019re just sitting there. And the main individual \u2014 the gentleman in gold robes with a big white beard \u2014 he starts out the conversation by pointing at me like this [holds index finger out<\/em>] and he says, \u2018I want you to know that we do not hate Americans.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I was like, OK<\/em>. I didn\u2019t say anything. I\u2019m just thinking, Where is this going?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHe went on to like a 10-minute monologue about how they love Americans and \u2018they\u2019re generous\u2019 and \u2018they\u2019re friendly.\u2019 Of course, I\u2019m sitting there thinking, Well, this probably has something to do with the 100,000 U.S. troops that are sitting in Saudi Arabia that have just started the second Gulf War<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The meeting was about to take a turn. For Edwards, the primary concern wasn\u2019t Kakuto Chojin<\/em> or even Xbox. It was about Microsoft\u2019s broader business interests in the Middle East, and the potential financial impact a mistake like this could have on other parts of the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s when it gets scary,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Appealing to Japanese players<\/h2>\n

This all began not in Saudi Arabia or at Microsoft\u2019s headquarters in the U.S., but in Tokyo, where in 2001 Microsoft was building a team to release the original Xbox in Japan.<\/p>\n

As part of Microsoft\u2019s efforts to appeal to the local market \u2014 which included a marketing campaign showing founder Bill Gates holding a cheeseburger<\/a> \u2014 the team was looking for games to sell Japanese players on the console. In particular, it was looking to sign deals with established developers who had been successful elsewhere.<\/p>\n

One of the top names on its list: Seiichi Ishii.<\/p>\n

Over the previous decade, Ishii had a front-row seat to the origins of 3D fighting games, working as the main designer on Virtua Fighter<\/em> at Sega and directing Tekken<\/em> and Tekken 2<\/em> at Namco, then starting the studio DreamFactory with Square and directing anime-styled fighting games Tobal No. 1<\/em> and 2<\/em>, party fighter Ehrgeiz<\/em>, and brawler The Bouncer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

After finishing The Bouncer<\/em>, DreamFactory broke away from Square, changing its name to Dream-Publishing right as Microsoft was setting up its Xbox group in Japan.<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\" \"\" \"\"<\/figure>\n

\u201cThey were the<\/em> team that people wanted to work with and Xbox in Japan was just starting up, so I wouldn\u2019t say we had the better hand or anything,\u201d says Microsoft Japan product planner Jonah Nagai of the negotiations to sign the game. \u201cIt was pretty much just a small, new Microsoft team working with a \u2014 not legendary, really, but close to legendary \u2014 game creator.\u201d (Ishii didn\u2019t respond to multiple requests to participate in this story.)<\/p>\n

The project began as a shiny tech demo named Project K-X, then evolved into a full game, with a dark, violent tone and development responsibilities split between Dream-Publishing and Microsoft Japan. <\/strong>On paper, the game checked a number of boxes \u2014 it was a new fighting game from a notable developer planned as an Xbox launch title that could show off the hardware\u2019s visual capabilities, similar to what Sega had with Virtua Fighter and PlayStation had with Tekken.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quite a strategic title to have in the lineup,\u201d says Microsoft Japan producer Yoshikatsu Kanemaru.<\/p>\n

The game never paid off on its initial promise, though. Development delays led to it missing both the U.S. and Japan Xbox launches, putting it a year behind Team Ninja\u2019s breakout Xbox fighting game, Dead or Alive 3<\/em>. And reviews criticized the game\u2019s depth and inspiration, with its Metacritic score landing at 46<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember it was hyped up at E3 one year,\u201d says Edwards. \u201cIt was like, Well, it\u2019s a whole new fighting system, and as you fight you get more bloody and beat up<\/em>, which at the time was really novel, and it was kind of sold on that whole idea. And it really didn\u2019t live up to those expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The internal discovery<\/h2>\n

In early November 2002, Edwards discovered Kakuto Chojin<\/em> had a bigger problem than reviews or competing with Dead or Alive for market share.<\/p>\n

The game was nearing its scheduled Nov. 12 release when she got a message asking about an audio file in the soundtrack. The file appeared in a background song for the character Asad, a Muay Thai fighter from Somalia, and featured what sounded to Edwards like Arabic chants.<\/p>\n

This was what her group was built for \u2014 requests would come in from different parts of Microsoft, and the geopolitical strategy team would investigate and flag any cultural concerns. Edwards says she had pitched Xbox executives Robbie Bach and Shane Kim on taking a more comprehensive approach, which they resisted, so her team took one-off requests as they came in.<\/p>\n

Edwards was curious about the file, so she took it to Ahmad Mustafa, an Arabic linguist friend who worked in her building at Microsoft. Mustafa identified portions of the Quran in the chants, specifically lines from Surat al-Ikhlas referring to the virtues of the Islamic god.<\/p>\n

For Edwards and Mustafa, this raised multiple red flags.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Saudi Arabia, Islam plays a central role in all aspects of life, and the Quran is revered as the word of God,\u201d says Mohammed Kateeb, then managing director of Microsoft\u2019s operations in the Middle East. \u201cThere are strict guidelines around how Quranic verses should be treated \u2014 they are recited with great reverence, and hearing them in inappropriate contexts, such as mixed with music or in entertainment, is considered deeply disrespectful. Additionally, associating Quranic verses with violent video game content was seen as offensive, as the Quran is regarded as a guide for spiritual and ethical conduct, not something to be trivialized in the context of entertainment or violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like the national anthem,\u201d says Bilal Sununu, then general manager of Microsoft Saudi Arabia, acknowledging the extreme differences in meaning between the two. \u201cYou should listen to it until the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the game \u2014 with Asad front and center on the box art \u2014 was on its way to stores across the United States. Edwards recalls hearing there were 75,000 copies manufactured and about to be released.<\/p>\n

Edwards and Mustafa felt Microsoft needed to halt the game\u2019s release, so Edwards quickly put together a plan, emailing managers at Microsoft\u2019s Middle Eastern subsidiaries to confirm they felt the same way, then using their replies to make a case for why Microsoft should stop the shipments in progress.<\/p>\n

According to Edwards, Microsoft executives met her partway, going ahead with the copies that had already been manufactured but replacing the audio file for subsequent copies. Edwards says she strongly resisted this. Robbie Bach, Ed Fries, and Shane Kim \u2014 who ran Microsoft’s Xbox division and first-party games group \u2014 say they don’t remember the details of this decision<\/p>\n

(As a quick sampling, we purchased 10 random copies of the game on eBay and tested them. Seven ended up being originals, three fixed.)<\/p>\n

The public discovery<\/h2>\n

Almost three months after Microsoft\u2019s internal discovery, word started getting out publicly about the audio file \u2014 first on Arabic message boards, then through news outlets like Al Riyadh and a letter from the Saudi Arabian government addressed to Bill Gates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWoe unto them, how was this game able to enter Muslim lands, how dare they do this, Allah forgive us, these games are for youth and children whose morals are affected by these games,\u201d wrote user flowerqueen on the Palestine Dialogue Network<\/a>. \u201c[\u2026] As a Muslim, I demand that all competent authorities take this issue seriously and take all measures necessary against Microsoft to hold them accountable for this repugnant act and their mockery of the religion of Islam and the word of Allah Almighty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShop owners, please stop selling the game immediately, print this page and distribute it to shops, you will be rewarded,\u201d read a fax sent to local stores. Microsoft wasn\u2019t selling the Xbox in the Middle East, but it was aware that people had imported consoles, with Edwards pointing to \u201cseveral thousand\u201d registered systems in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

Kanemaru even recalls hearing that Microsoft\u2019s U.S. office received a package containing anthrax in response, though six people who worked for Microsoft say they weren\u2019t aware of a situation involving anthrax, with most being skeptical of the claim.<\/p>\n

In the background of all this was a growing climate of Islamophobia in the West that impacted how many at Microsoft viewed the situation, with multiple employees speaking for this story saying tensions between the U.S. and the Middle East came up in their conversations about the game at the time.<\/p>\n

This time, Microsoft didn\u2019t stop partway in its response.<\/p>\n

Adame, who assisted with crisis management at Microsoft, remembers attending multiple meetings the day the company discovered the issue had flared up, and says he alerted Microsoft\u2019s security team in case \u201cfanatics\u201d decided to attack one of its offices. He points to this as \u201cprobably in the top three\u201d of the most sensitive situations he had to help manage over nearly 15 years working at Microsoft.<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\" \"\" \"\"<\/figure>\n

In one of the meetings that happened that day, Adame says he recalls then-chief Xbox officer Bach going through the numbers of what a recall would cost Microsoft, then making the call to pull the game from stores. Bach says he doesn\u2019t recall the details of the decision. Fries recalls being in similar meetings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a relatively big deal,\u201d says Fries, then vice president of Microsoft Game Studios. \u201cAny time we had to recall a product, it was definitely something that was coming up to me and we were gonna have a conversation about.\u201d<\/p>\n

An internal investigation revealed that the audio file that got Microsoft in trouble had also appeared in other games, including The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time<\/em>, which Nintendo released in 1998 \u2014 and that the composer at Microsoft Japan chose the file because they heard it in Ocarina of Time<\/em> and liked it, say two people speaking for this story. (In the years since, fans online have tracked down the source of this file, listed as \u201cprayer 1,\u201d to Best Service\u2019s Voice Spectral Vol. 1<\/em>, a German royalty-free sample CD released in 1995.)<\/p>\n

For many at Microsoft, though, their focus wasn\u2019t on using details like that to defend the product, but to maintain lucrative deals in place elsewhere at the company. Microsoft\u2019s success made it a bigger target for criticism, and more willing to speak out when things took a wrong turn.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of reporters in the news at that time used to make money by just criticizing Microsoft,\u201d says Sununu. \u201cAnd to us as Microsoft at that time, we always had to react. [\u2026] We were number one in the market. We had a lot of government contracts. We had a lot of ties with the Ministry of Education. And hence, we had to take action and we had to show the public that we\u2019re taking action.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I would talk to Bill [Gates and then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer], they were nervous that I was using the Microsoft brand at all,\u201d says Fries. \u201cYou know, if I did something for a game that affected Windows or Office, it could do billions of dollars of damage, right? [\u2026] Microsoft\u2019s a global company and we sell products all over the world. We don\u2019t want to piss anyone off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Microsoft went public with news of the recall on Feb. 6, 2003, issuing a statement apologizing for what happened. It pulled the game from stores in the U.S. and Japan \u2014 despite the Japanese version shipping later and having the audio fixed prior to release \u2014 and canceled a planned European release.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy big takeaway from this was that gaming is like every form of entertainment in this respect \u2014 it is intensely cultural in nature,\u201d says Bach. \u201cIf you want to be successful in a market, you need to respect that culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ripple effects<\/h2>\n

Following the recall, Microsoft and Dream-Publishing went their separate ways. Kanemaru says Dream-Publishing had already been paid, so the decision didn\u2019t financially impact the team, yet he couldn\u2019t help but be disappointed by how the situation played out. <\/p>\n

Despite the negative critical reception and low sales prior to the recall, Kanemaru remains proud of Kakuto Chojin<\/em>, citing the combat system inspired by DreamFactory\u2019s work on Tobal No. 1<\/em> and the team\u2019s extensive balancing efforts. \u201cDue to the recall, people have forgotten about the game,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a shame all this work went to waste.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some were also hopeful for a follow-up.<\/p>\n

In a 2003 Famitsu Xbox Perfect Guide interview, Ishii expressed interest in a sequel, saying that fighting games only \u201ccome to life\u201d when players compete in person and that he\u2019d want a potential sequel to also be released in arcades.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith every title you want to be able to build out a franchise, so once the title was pulled and people had time to process it, I think that was the biggest disappointment,\u201d says Microsoft Japan supervisor James Spahn. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t so much that, Hey, we\u2019re not going to get extra royalties<\/em>. It was, There\u2019s not going to be a sequel<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spahn says that it became harder to get another fighting game off the ground as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just kind of nixed the whole genre for us, for the Japan team at least,\u201d he says. \u201cSo that of course was a disappointment, for us and Ishii-san at Dream-Publishing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back to the start<\/h2>\n

Back at the conference room at Al Riyadh in 2003, Edwards is sorting through what the government official meant when he said he doesn\u2019t hate Americans.<\/p>\n

It turned out he was comparing Americans to the British and the French, she says, referencing the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 that split up the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Then, Edwards says, the official looked down at the legal pad he\u2019d brought with him and started rattling off questions that weren\u2019t quite as friendly.<\/p>\n

The first question, as Edwards recalls:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Why did Microsoft open its first Middle Eastern office in Israel and not an Arab country?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so the two gentlemen from Microsoft on each side of me were whispering in my ear, saying, \u2018Don\u2019t answer that. You\u2019re only here to talk about the game.\u2019 So I\u2019m kind of almost pleading the Fifth. […] So I just said, \u2018I\u2019m sorry, I\u2019m only here to discuss the game.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cNext question: \u2018Why did Office 97 release in Hebrew before Arabic?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Only here to talk about the game.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Why did Outlook release the Judaic calendar before the Islamic calendar?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is question after question after question all related to those kinds of issues, many of which were before my time or things I had nothing to do with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edwards says the conversation eventually turned to Kakuto Chojin<\/em>, at which point she gave her prepared explanation about games being big projects with a lot of moving parts, and how her team tried to catch all cultural mistakes yet couldn\u2019t always do so \u2014 being careful not to go into the details of Microsoft initially choosing to ignore her advice. She says she closed out her explanation with an apology, saying Microsoft would work to do better.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey broke out into a conversation after my explanation, and they were speaking in Arabic, which \u2014 obviously I didn\u2019t understand it,\u201d says Edwards. \u201cIt felt like it was a little bit heated. There was kind of some going back and forth there. And then the main gentleman turned to me and just said, \u2018Thank you for your time,\u2019 and then they all got up and [went] out the door.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we left, and of course I asked my Microsoft colleagues to debrief me as to what just happened. And they said, \u2018Well, they were basically discussing whether your answer was sufficient.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Sufficient for what? What would have happened if it wasn\u2019t?\u2019 And they were like [shrugs<\/em>] \u2018I don\u2019t know!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For about five years leading up to that point, Edwards had been running the geopolitical strategy team and increasingly wanting to do more with games \u2014 yet she says she hadn\u2019t been able to convince executives like Robbie Bach to make it a regular part of the process.<\/p>\n

After the recall and everything that happened with Kakuto Chojin<\/em>, though, she says that attitude changed \u2014 which ended up leading to a shift in process, where Edwards\u2019 group started analyzing every first-party game Microsoft released. (Edwards even turned game culturalization, as she calls it, into a career, later leaving Microsoft and continuing to do the same sort of analysis on many of the industry\u2019s biggest games, from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2<\/em> to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the Kakuto Chojin<\/em> issue that got them to understand,\u201d Edwards says, \u201cbecause I got a call from Robbie a few weeks after that happened where he said, \u2018Hey, you know that stuff you\u2019ve been telling us to do? Let\u2019s talk about how we can make that happen.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Yeah, let\u2019s do that. I think that\u2019s a great idea.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In early 2003, Kate Edwards found herself sitting at the offices of newspaper Al Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, preparing to apologize on Microsoft\u2019s behalf. \u201cLarge room,\u201d Edwards says. \u201cBig round table in the room. No windows or anything. There was a couple of guards standing at the door.\u201d As she sat with two local Microsoft colleagues, she tried to remember what she\u2019d discussed days before with international senior public relations director Ricardo Adame. \u201c\u2018Say this. Don\u2019t say this. Be careful about this.\u2019\u201d Edwards was the head of Microsoft\u2019s geopolitical strategy team, a group built to keep \u2014 or in this case, get \u2014 the company out of trouble when its teams produced content that could upset people from different cultures. Disputed map borders. Misrepresented flags.…<\/p>\n

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