Microsoft Only Sold 100 Xbox Ones in Japan Last Week

[Steven Bogos]

Microsoft Only Sold 100 Xbox Ones in Japan Last Week

Microsoft's sales in Japan are at an all-time low.

While the PS4 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/xbox%20one?os=xbox+one] may be neck-and-neck over in America, across the pacific ocean in Japan it's a whole different story. Microsoft has traditionally performed quite poorly in the region, but this week it has hit an all-time low, selling just one hundred Xbox One consoles in the entire country.

Compare that to 10,000 PS4s, 16,000 Wii U's, and 19,000 New 3DS XL's and it paints a more complete picture of how unpopular the console is. Even PS Vita TV [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/129648-PlayStation-Vita-TV-Launches-In-Japan-Americans-Feel-Left-Out] managed to outsell the XB1, moving 566 units last week.

On the software side of things, the 3DS dominated the charts, with Rhythm Tengoku The Best + and Dragon Ball Z Super Ultimate Fighter taking the top two spots. The best selling non-3DS game was Nintendo's crazy squid shooter Splatoon [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/141295-Splatoon-Datamine-Reveals-Future-Content], which managed to move an impressive 53,000 units in the country.

To add further insult to injury, in the top fifty best selling software for the week, there is not a single Xbox One game.

Makes you wonder why Microsoft even bothers with the region at all... Surely it's operating costs must be higher than whatever it makes off of 100 sales a week.

Source: Media Create (Japanese) [http://www.m-create.com/ranking/]

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[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

Man...When fast food promotions can't save your product, you know your X-Boned

 

[-Ezio-]

ouch. i know xbox has never been a big thing in japan but damn.

 

[Supernova1138]

The Xbox brand has always been a poor seller in Japan as it is associated primary with shooters, sports games, and western developed RPGs, none of which the Japanese are really interested in playing in any significant numbers. The only time an Xbox console has had any decent sales is when Microsoft threw some money at Japanese developers to get some exclusives from them eg. Tales of Vesperia, The Idolm@ster, and Ace Combat 6. I'd agree Microsoft might as well cut their losses and just drop Japan at this point. At best, if they throw a bunch of money at Japanese devs for games that will sell in Japan, they'll get a small uptick in sales when that game comes out, and then it just flatlines again. There's no way that would be profitable and I doubt Microsoft wants to throw a lot of money around just to say they have a presence in Japan.

 

[Steven Bogos]

The Xbox brand has always been a poor seller in Japan as it is associated primary with shooters, sports games, and western developed RPGs, none of which the Japanese are really interested in playing in any significant numbers. The only time an Xbox console has had any decent sales is when Microsoft threw some money at Japanese developers to get some exclusives from them eg. Tales of Vesperia, The Idolm@ster, and Ace Combat 6. I'd agree Microsoft might as well cut their losses and just drop Japan at this point. At best, if they throw a bunch of money at Japanese devs for games that will sell in Japan, they'll get a small uptick in sales when that game comes out, and then it just flatlines again. There's no way that would be profitable and I doubt Microsoft wants to throw a lot of money around just to say they have a presence in Japan.

Except that Call of Duty is still one of the biggest sellers in Japan, and The Witcher 3 and Alien: Isolation are right up there in this week's list of top 10 sellers.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Maybe everyone there is just waiting for the 1TB model to come out? *begins dodging the rotten produce thrown at me*

I have no idea why they still try, other than being supportive to the few fans who did buy an xbone. The list of upcoming xbone exclusives for the Asian market looks incredibly lacking.

Maybe Tomb Raider can help somewhat? (How big is TR in Japan?)

I honestly think MS should just abandon Japan if sales are this bad. I mean yes, I agree with the idea of trying to reach out to different customers in different regions, but the Xbox brand in Japan was never popular to begin with. The original Xbox sold a total of 450,000 units http://www.ign.com/articles/2011/11/23/the-life-and-death-of-the-original-xbox?page=2

And while the Xbox 360 still did better then the original Xbox, it still didn't sell like crazy, with only a 1.6 million units sold. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-02-26-wii-u-has-finally-overtaken-xbox-360-in-japan

The Xbox One is set to perform even worse then the original Xbox.

In my opinion, MS should just reevaluate their plans over there.

To add to that info, the only reason the 360 did as well as it did was that MS got Mistwalker and a couple other devs to make a few exclusive JRPGs for the 360 (and I bet those titles hit near 100% saturation of the Japanese 360 install base). Even with those, it wasn't enough to generate a stable reputation for the brand.

I'd say they should just port all of their xbone titles to PC for Japanese releases, but PC gaming isn't exactly a big thing there anymore, either.

 

[Zontar]

How many of those 100 where bought by some of the foreign businessmen, students studying abroad there and soldiers/family members of soldiers from US bases? I just need to know because raisins

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

Maybe everyone there is just waiting for the 1TB model to come out? *begins dodging the rotten produce thrown at me*

I have no idea why they still try, other than being supportive to the few fans who did buy an xbone. The list of upcoming xbone exclusives for the Asian market looks incredibly lacking.

Maybe Tomb Raider can help somewhat? (How big is TR in Japan?)

I think the best selling 360 games in Japan were all from proven Japanese developers and/or franchises. If Microsoft can wrangle an exclusive with one of them they might just stand a chance.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

In other news, the sun is warm, birds fly in the sky and bacon is delicious.

 

[VanQ]

I honestly think MS should just abandon Japan if sales are this bad. I mean yes, I agree with the idea of trying to reach out to different customers in different regions, but the Xbox brand in Japan was never popular to begin with. The original Xbox sold a total of 450,000 units http://www.ign.com/articles/2011/11/23/the-life-and-death-of-the-original-xbox?page=2

And while the Xbox 360 still did better then the original Xbox, it still didn't sell like crazy, with only a 1.6 million units sold. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-02-26-wii-u-has-finally-overtaken-xbox-360-in-japan

The Xbox One is set to perform even worse then the original Xbox.

In my opinion, MS should just reevaluate their plans over there.

It's also worth noting that the only reason the 360 moved that many units at all was because idolmaster was a 360 exclusive for nearly 10 years. After Bamco anandoned that ship and released imas2 on PS3 then there was no reason to buy a 360 anymore. My japanese friends even called their 360 their "imasbox" instead of Xbox.

 

[Something Amyss]

In other news, the sun is warm, birds fly in the sky and bacon is delicious.

This is more "birds have jet propulsion" than "birds can fly."

 

[Casual Shinji]

It's that 'X', Microsoft -- The Japanese just don't care for it. Take a hint... and a vowel.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Yeah, when you look at console sales figures in specific regions you start to see some crazy things.


Consider the previous generation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_(seventh_generation)
PS3: roughly 84 million, Xbox360 84 million, Wii 102 million
(Yes, I know people like to ignore the wii, but still.)

The 360 and PS3 ended up about even, the wii won it by a moderate margin.

But now look at japan:
Wii: 12.75 million
Ps3: 11 million
360: 1.5 million

So... while worldwide the Wii only won out by about 20% more than the others (and maybe 40% of the total), if you consider japan it won by by a smaller margin. however, it outsold the Xbox by more than 8 to 1.

in the US:
Wii: 39 million
PS3: 17 million
360: 26 million

Here we see the Wii still outdoes pretty much everything else, but the 360 massively outdoes the PS3

Europe:
Wii: 25 million
PS3: 16 million
360: 14 million

Somewhere between the japanese and american results, the Wii still outsold everything else, but the 360 and PS3 are close together.

Other weird cases exist, but in short, Microsoft does well in the US, Sony does well in Japan, and they are about the same in europe.
Nintendo's fortunes seem to be all over the place though. But they still show more consistent strong performance in Japan than elsewhere.

Europe is the most fickle it seems. I guess that makes sense since none of the systems are from a local company, so you can't get weird factors like patriotism or the like showing up...

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Maybe everyone there is just waiting for the 1TB model to come out? *begins dodging the rotten produce thrown at me*

I have no idea why they still try, other than being supportive to the few fans who did buy an xbone. The list of upcoming xbone exclusives for the Asian market looks incredibly lacking.

Maybe Tomb Raider can help somewhat? (How big is TR in Japan?)

I think the best selling 360 games in Japan were all from proven Japanese developers and/or franchises. If Microsoft can wrangle an exclusive with one of them they might just stand a chance.

Even with all of the exclusives the 360 did have, it only sold 1.6 million in Japan. They would have to get a handful and get them out as soon as possible to show the potential customers the xbone is worth it. It might be too late to secure those exclusives too, even if they did wish to try. When the PS3 was announced, it was expensive and hard to develop for. The 360 had the advantage over it, and was likely able to get more exclusives because of that. The xbone doesn't really have any advantage over the PS4, and the PS4 had a half year head start in Japan and solid foothold in the market.

It would take way more money than MS would probably like to invest in the exclusives that could get the xbone to catch up to its predecessor in a market they seem to barely care about. They didn't prep the One's launch window library to be successful in the region, and the kinnect requirement also hurt it in many ways.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

The fairly pricey Western console's not doing well in a region that seems to be going nuts for shitty handhelds and mobile fluff? Colour me surprised.

Symbolically it would be fairly terrible for MS to withdraw it from the region, but as others have noted, surely from a purely business standpoint this isn't worth it.

Maybe Tomb Raider can help somewhat? (How big is TR in Japan?)

Beyond the usual niche fans that support IP's across regions, I don't think TR's ever taken off in Japan (if someone can provide figures countering that, fair do's). It's clearly nowhere near big enough to be a major system seller.

 

[TallanKhan]

The whole XBox in Japan thing has become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The last one didn't have stellar sales so they pushed Japan down the list of launch locations into 2nd or 3rd tier or whatever, which only impacted sales further. The Japanese also tend to prefer to support Japanese companies, which puts Sony and Nintendo at something of an advantage.

I have often thought that a number of Western companies might do better in Japan if they operated a full Japanese Subsidiary, but I guess it's a big gamble to take.

 

[vagabondwillsmile]

The Xbox brand has always been a poor seller in Japan as it is associated primary with shooters, sports games, and western developed RPGs, none of which the Japanese are really interested in playing in any significant numbers. The only time an Xbox console has had any decent sales is when Microsoft threw some money at Japanese developers to get some exclusives from them eg. Tales of Vesperia, The Idolm@ster, and Ace Combat 6. I'd agree Microsoft might as well cut their losses and just drop Japan at this point. At best, if they throw a bunch of money at Japanese devs for games that will sell in Japan, they'll get a small uptick in sales when that game comes out, and then it just flatlines again. There's no way that would be profitable and I doubt Microsoft wants to throw a lot of money around just to say they have a presence in Japan.

Except that Call of Duty is still one of the biggest sellers in Japan, and The Witcher 3 and Alien: Isolation are right up there in this week's list of top 10 sellers.

Are those x box exlusives? Are the sales of the X Box consoles boosting the sales of those games and/or vice versa (Witcher 3 debuted in Japan selling 65,000 it's first week)?

Unless the answer to both of those questions is "yes", the crux of Supernovall38's point (which is in two parts: general game genre / style, and exclusivity in relation to the movement of the x box line of consoles) is still pretty solid.

Granted - The Witcher comes from CD Projekt Red, but it arguably has a bit more in common with with Souls and the like than it has with core genre titles from Bathesda for example. COD is a western FPS but it has an undeniable world wide appeal thanks to its multiplayer - which is its own special animal. Aditionally, Square Enix is its distributer in Japan, and they aren't goint to slouch there. Alien isolation is also a western FPS but it is published by Sega. So, even those exceptions have not insignificant at-home support / connection / appeal in Japan. And they serve to only address one of the elements in Supernovall38's argument. In general, western style and homegrown western gaming still, comparatively, isn't an easy sell in Japan.

Another relevant question to ask is: how readily do western developers localise and promote their work in Japan? How do those efforts compare with those of Japanese developers and game styles more charctaristically Japanese?

Finally, considering the ex-pat and western government / military population in Japan, how many X Boxes are being sold to gamers in Japan who are actually Japanese compared to X Boxes being sold to westerners who happen to be living there?

Considering Microsoft's international roll-out for X Box One, their marketing strategy, their core demographics, and the genres/styles of gaming most generally associated with their brand, I would be surprised if they weren't having some serious discussions about how to address support in eastern markets.

 

[Mortuorum]

Except that Call of Duty is still one of the biggest sellers in Japan, and The Witcher 3 and Alien: Isolation are right up there in this week's list of top 10 sellers.

Yeah, but Japanese gamers can play those on a PlayStation 4, so why buy an Xbox One?

The real issue is cultural. "Japanese Consumers Do Not Buy American Game Console" is not news.

 

[LordLundar]

Huh, it fared better than I thought it would.

Don't forget, at the TGS (Tokyo Game Show) the people at the X-Box section were BEGGING people to take a look because they couldn't get people to come in willingly meanwhile the Nintendo and Sony areas were PACKED.