People did buy the Xbox One in Japan. Not very many people, mind you. For a new console’s first week on sale, these numbers are, well, not good.
According to Famitsu, the Xbox One sold 23,562 units in Japan in its first week on sale, which dates from September 4 to September 7. In comparison, the Xbox 360 sold over 60,000 units in its first two days on sale in Japan when it originally launched back in 2005.
Famitsu also has a breakdown for the biggest selling games. Number one was Titanfall at 22,416 copies — however, be aware that these numbers include copies of the game that were included in the Xbox One Titanfall bundles. The next biggest selling title was Kinect Sports Rivals at 14,191 copies. But again, realise that this number includes copies of the game that were included with a special Xbox One bundle. And finally, the third biggest selling Xbox One game was Dead Rising 3 at 7,330 copies.
To put these console numbers in better context, the PS4 sold over 300,000 units in its first week on sale. Ditto for the Wii U. Note that these numbers were considered somewhat “low.”
Even though these figures are terrible, after seeing how the console’s launch looked in Japan, it’s kind of surprising that Microsoft even eked out 20,000 sold units.
The top photo was taken by Twitter user Vince_Tokyo.
Comments
16 responses to “The Xbox One’s First Week Sales In Japan Are Pretty Bad”
It’s a pity culturally foreign brands struggle through stigma in Japan amongst other things (my mate put up with racist remarks about his appearance daily when he lived there for two years, he’s italian).
I think on the flip side as a machine it ain’t great, I preordered the xbox one BEFORE reading it couldn’t handle 1080p in bf4. Since then I’ve been pretty regretful about my purchase. I’m a graphic designer by trade, art is my lively hood, I just really expected things like 1080p to be a non issue.
I hear all the time graphics arn’t everything.
As an artist give me vast resources and see what I come up with! Power creates choice, whether you use it is the question. Sure, a smart designer will find a way and pull a miracle out of a hat but tech is our friend, especially dealing with print and accurate rgb colour gamut based work. Not to mention the revolution that was vector in the 80s.
Back to the poor sales, I get it, Microsoft you have a long road to recovery.
I think it’s more of the cultural thing than poor console design. Many of my Japanese friends only buy Sony Products even though a device (ie phone) from Apple or Samsung is better, their TVs are Sony, their white goods are Sony or a Japanese brand. I asked my mate why, and its a “support the home team” thing.
Some people, sure. If you look at Japanese smartphone distributions, the iPhone is still the most popular handset. German cars also sell strongly, despite the strong presence of domestic brands in electronics and motor vehicles. They’ll happily buy foreign brands if they think it’s the best, or meets their needs. The Xbox just doesn’t connect.
It does, however, Kinect. Close enough?
Seems like Titan Fall in Japan is the equivalent of a niche JRPG coming out here. I would also be interested to know how many people installed Killer Instinct.
All jrpgs are niche now in the west.
Pokemon is a JRPG
So the people who buy Titan Fall are like, reverse weeaboos?
They can’t handle the awesomeness :p.
In all seriousness though, with devs halving their load and only regionalising for playstation, and Japan being a mobile gaming country, something Sony do and Microsoft don’t, it’s not really surprising.
When the 360 was released, there were a bunch of JRPGs (and one or two Gundam games) which had been announced for release but which missed the actual launch window, as well as Ridge Racer 6 which actually DID make the launch window.
It also had almost a year of lead time before the PS3 was released, close to the reverse of the situation with this generation.
In contrast, the Xbox One marketing seems to have put almost zero effort into titles that would appeal directly to the Japanese and released something like ten months after the PS4.
Frankly if I were Japanese I’d be wary too…
With the 360, MS made a serious play for the Japanese market. Spent a whole buttload of money securing exclusive content and promoting it etc. And despite all that money and effort, it didn’t work. So I reckon they probably don’t care that much any more – especially given the fact that home consoles in general are on the slide in Japan. So they’ve basically stuck it in the shops and left it to live or die on its own. Even if it tanks completely (which it appears to be doing), it’s not like they had some massive market share there to lose in the first place.
I agree, but saving face is far more valuable. They can’t afford to have such pitiful sales numbers anywhere.
Quite true.
The main downside to terrible sales in Japan is that it makes it much harder to secure content from Japanese developers. It more or less guarantees a pool of exclusives for their competitors.
Those exclusives still require the not-insignificant work of localisation, but it is a potential vulnerability.
I have to agree though, they tried to buy market share last time and it didn’t work. There was no reason to think it would work any better this time; clearly somebody decided not to throw good money after bad.
As much as I love seeing the Xbone die a slow death in Japan, i want to know more about how it is dying a slow death in other places such as the Netherlands.
I have an idea! An info graphic that colours each country using RGB colour values each calculated as a percentage of the total console sales in that country.
Green for X1, Blue for PS4, Red for Wii U.
Not sure what else they were expecting, releasing it there so long after everywhere else in the world.