Japan Is Now Xbox's Fastest Growing Market Worldwide, Confirms Exec

Seeing as Sony's determined to commit sudoku in Japan I'm not surprised that Xbox is seeing an uptick.

@LocalPenguin Well Microsoft are really trying as far as bringing as many Japanese games to Xbox as they can. The more they bring the more appealing it will be there. This is good news though.

I subbed to a YouTuber called Zuvi. She stated in a video that she and her husband have never owned or been interested in Xbox, but procured a Series S because of Game Pass. I imagine they're not the only ones. 😊

Well that's good news maybe more jrpgs on gamepass then?

Also just checked sales figures and by the end of may the ps5 sold 742,000 in Japan compared to xbox's series combined 45,000

Obviously miles behind playstation but how does that compare to last gen after 7 months?

@UltimateOtaku91 Where did you go to look at those console sales?

@Snake_V5 Famitsu weekly Japanese charts, plus they tell you the total sales

Fastest growing region? That's not that too tricky coming off a generation that used to sell double digits in Japan per week.

@The_New_Butler Beat me to it! 😂😂😂

@UltimateOtaku91 Last time I looked it up I think the lifetime sales for XB1/X was 120,000 thousand.

Microsoft is also still advertising Game Pass through Hololive over in Japan. I was watching a live stream the other week where the Vtubers were talking about the pricing and there were so many Japanese viewers that were surprised when they heard that you can buy 3 months of Game Pass Ultimate for only 100 yen (basically one dollar). Really cool how Microsoft is using that strategy over in Japan as well, that's definitely going to attract a lot of customers initially and help spread the word, which is very important in the case of the Xbox brand over there.

@mousieone yeah must be bad as they have stopped including the xbox one/X sales figures

Xbox need to give Japan more untis if they really want to make a mark, over the last couple of months the series S and x are getting 3 digit sales numbers weekly and being outsold by ps4 weekly and that isn't good enough.

And when xbox do get stock, it either goes to European countries or America instead of sending a good chunk to japan

I'll wait for actual numbers. Having a 100% (a hypo) increase in sales is great unless it's going from 200 to 600 units sold. Hopefully they get Persona 5 Royal on Gamepass. That game is so good.

Makes sense, they had pretty much no presence in Japan and Sony pissed off a lot of Japanese gamers when they moved Playstation to the US.

Soo.. They sold more than 12 consoles?

Seriously though, this story needs numbers to give it some perspective.

@robe I agreed with that. Here you go with some numbers, average XB1 a week before new consoles was at best 81. Series machines average is 400.

Average PS weekly sales is about 20k and Switch is about 100k. In fact right now the PS4 still outsells Xbox. And sometimes the 2DS.

The issue right now is supply between all three, so whether the system is actually wanted or not it’s hard to say. But I think the demand is better than XB1 but not good.

Does that help?

Phil saved Xbox and he... wait, improved Xbox's reception in Japan? Wooow! But yes, Xbox 360 was relatively fine in Japan so it makes sense that Series S/X is getting some Japanese love after Microsoft's efforts to get Japanese developers on the platform and even on Game Pass. Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts and Tales of on Game Pass. That's incredible.

What's strange about all of this is that many (though definitely not all) of the Akihabara stores have a lot of Xbox presence. I've always wondered how they justify the shelf space with so few sales, especially since I was mostly over there from 2014 to 2019, the absolute low of Xbox popularity in Japan. It's so weird to go into all of the used game stores and see all of these great old OG Xbox and 360 games, many of which I'd never seen in the USA, and then the same old XB1 crap over and over - though I did buy a few Japan exclusives. Here's hoping Series S cracks 4 figures...and beyond.

At first I was really excited. And then I read "360 was popular in Japan". 何？

This is a great improvement over the time when nothing was released for the Xbox One. This year, we finally got to play Sea of Thieves.

I can partially confirm this because i've seen it myself some excitement from japanese on Twitter. With some digging, i found out Game Pass became trending in japanese timeline after Xbox & Bethesda Showcase. Some of them are impressed with games like FH5 & Infinite, excited with Starfield, and genuinely surprised that you can play so many titles announced on the showcase on Game Pass just by paying 1100¥/month.

The battle for Nintendo's table scraps in Japan might be about to get interesting. Since the PS2 era ended, PlayStation sales have been far from stellar over there.

@robe The Xbox platform transcends console hardware. You can be subscribed to Game Pass and not even own an Xbox, yet you're still part of that community. Engagement is the key metric.

@mousieone cheers, that helps a lot, that level of detail should really have been in the article.

The Japanese do seem to love handheld/mobile devices for gaming though, so would be interesting to see how GP subs compare to XB console sales over there.

@gingataisen agreed. But this article talks about hardware sales and specifically the success of the Series S

@dmcc0 well they also like cheaper and smaller consoles and the Switch and Xbox Series S both fit that