Sales Report Hints At Low Initial Stock For Xbox Series X|S In Japan

Hope the Japanese xbox fans can get Series S/X as soon as possible!

It'll be interesting to see how many of all these consoles were available at launch in various markets. Long gone are the days where Japan were the focus for launches of new consoles and even more so now as they've moved into a predominantly mobile market.

The test for Xbox will be when these are freely available for purchase

I'm surprised it's shifted that many.
The only Japanese game they had for launch is the new Yakuza, but for whatever reason, it hasn't launched in Japan for the new Xbox consoles?

Wonder how famitsu gets its numbers, and if it accounts for things like Microsoft direct online sales.

@Tharsman I don’t think so because I don’t think MS reports those even to the NPD.

Hopefully the Series X can get foothold in japan this current gen..

it does put perspective on the optimistic article about how Japan sold pre-orders out so quickly a few weeks back. 22,000 isn't really that many at all and no surprise it sold out. Still, also surprised how low the PS5 figures were. Understand its all that were available but get the impression that there will be low take up long term in Japan for both consoles. Just never fully understand why.

I'm in Japan.

Huge numbers of Xbox Series X/S and PS5 were bought by resellers, and are now on the market at inflated prices. Sucks big time.

Also may (or may not) indicate that pre-order sales aren't a good measure of how popular a console is, at least here.

I got my Series S from a reseller, but managed to get it cheaper than retail due to a coupon and a limited time sale..

So the ps5 sold 118,000.
And the series S and X together sold nearly 21,000.
And since all of them ran out of stock that shows me Microsoft had no faith in the Japanese Market otherwise they would of supplied way more than 21,000

@UltimateOtaku91 really !?? That’s where you go with that. Well okay. MS sent almost the same number of units as the One. By comparison Sony only sent a third of the units as the PS4. Whose lost faith again?

I’d watch where you make your logic leaps.There isn’t stock for either machine; Covid and demand.

Edit: To be clear I don’t think either company has lost “faith” just that the supply chains are low.

@mousieone I'm just saying that with whatever stock both Sony and xbox had available that they both went for the UK/US market instead

So they sent 150,000 to the UK but 21,000 to Japan which has a much larger population, I don't call that trying to win the Japanese Market

@AJDarkstar I wonder to with a low stock supply. Also they are saying April, so it makes me wonder if they are going to try a soft relaunch in April 2021 but this time with MS Flight Sim ready for the new consoles.

@UltimateOtaku91 Okay but what’s makes better sense. Sending what you know sold before + or - a few units or sending a lot more and hoping? Even the UK only got like 5k more than last time. The only market MS probably felt sure of was the NA based on sales from previous. I’m saying that stock was low. And they never said they were trying to “win” Japan. Just that they were trying to have a presences, very big difference. Besides, the target in Japan is xCloud, not really console sales.

I’m just saying I wouldn’t read much into anything right now

With such a low availability I'm not sure any of the launch numbers mean very much...

Then again, looking at the Sony numbers, MS might be getting more units out there overall than Sony. Though at this point MS is very Japan focused and Sony as flipped off Japan as a whole while speaking double-tongued platitudes about the importance of the homeland.

That Dual Sense controller alone might as well have a "Not for Japan Sale" tag on them. It's almost as huge as The Duke.

@sib Wow did some reading, and you weren't kidding. It sounds like trying to any console (PS5/XSX/S/Switch) right now in Japan is requiring serious effort. (And by serious I mean mid early 2000s Black Friday US level.) wow just wow. -___- I feel so bad for people there. :/

@AJDarkstar yeah true regardless it’s going to be an interesting year.

@Kefka2589 Even the fact that the circle button rolls off the side of the controller is a flashback of The Duke. I can' not fathom that design actually came out of Japan. The huge console design did. The guy even wanted to make it bigger originally....hardware told him that was unncessary and to shrink it. I don't know if he designed the controller too, or not. But the whole console is basically a massive (literal) EffU to Japan . I kind a like the DS5. Not as much as the XSX controllers - those are almost flawless in every way with the glaring exception of lacking gyros. But DS5 is a good second place after a long line of controllers I despise from them. But it's soooooo anti-Japan....and sooo reminiscent of The Duke, it hurts.

@NEStalgia do you mean dual sense or DualShock 4 because DS5 is neither o.O?

@Kefka2589 I'm an old keyboard & mouse guy. I find playing shooters with a controller a painful experience compared to mice. The genre was developed for and evolved on mice. I've found, thanks to Splatoon, that gyros are a great substitute and really elevate shooters somewhere between controllers and mice. It's the reason Splatoon is pretty much the only shooter I actually have played much of in the past 7 years!

But almost no games on PS actually use the gyros for aiming. And XB never had them at all. There's some Splatoon players that don't use them and are quite good, but generally that's a severe handicap to not have that kind of precision aiming. But it's only really useful for shooters.

@mousieone I utterly hate the Dual Shock 3. I strongly dislike the Dual Shock 4. I actually don't dislike the Dual Sense (I just call it DS5 because calling it DS sounds like I'm talking about the duct tape and bubble gum cobbled N64 wannabe that was the original Dual Shock ) It's not bad....it's just not as good as XSX controller. But I do wish XSX had gyros!

@Kefka2589 Haha, yeah. If I weren't lazy and could bother to sit at a desk to play games again I'd be all about the mouse. I was PC-only for a decade or so and was there for the start of mouse aiming with the Doom & Quake modes (GIVE US MORE QUAKE, PHIL!) through the evolution of the shooter. It was hard going to controllers. By hard I mean I couldn't hit anything at all for a year. My Halo 1 experience was all mouse, too.

Technically "gyros" are mice. I remember back at a computer trade show back in the day a booth with this company called Gyration that was demoing their new Air Mouse. They had a gaming demo setup with a motorcycle game and some other stuff demonstrating how the Air Mouse revolutionized the mouse for gaming, and they were selling their $100+ mouse. It was the 90's and seemed hilarious. There were plenty of jokes about gyrating with your mouse going around.....

Flash forward to 2006 and Nintendo releases the Revolution....featuring motion controllers......from a company called Gyration. I was cynical at their booth....they laughed all the way to the bank....

So FWIW, motion controllers with gyros began life as a new kind of PC mouse for gaming (and presentations!) Nintendo salvaged it from ashes, and here we are.

There are definitely people that don't get along with gyros even in Splatoon...but dang it's the only shooter with mouse-like precision and quick aiming. And thus the only shooter with real 1:1 aiming on a console without any kind of aim assist etc (everything, even Halo has a ton of "we'll aim for you because aiming with a stick isn't actually humanly possible" enhancements.)

I still dream of the day when all shooters on consoles adopt that. But...alas....Microsoft refuses to implement them on my otherwise favorite controller. I really hoped this gen would change that.

@Kefka2589 Oh. Dreams. Well there's your problem!

There's Wii style gimmick motion controls, and shooter airmouse controls. The latter serve a purpose. The former is for people who think a track pad on a controller is a good idea.