Earlier this month, we reported on the Xbox One's historically weak Japanese launch, which saw under 24,000 units sold in its first four days on the market. Things have gone from bad to worse in the intervening weeks, with the system selling just under 1,500 units in the week ending September 21, according to tracking firm Media Create (as reported by 4Gamer).
Only 1,314 people bought a new Xbox One in Japan in the last week of reporting, a performance that follows just over 3,000 sales the week before. That puts the newly launched system well behind the Wii U and PS4, which continue to sell at least 7,000 systems a week in the country. Even the aging PS3 is outselling the Xbox One, with over 6,000 sales per week in the same time period.
Microsoft has traditionally struggled for a foothold in the Japanese console market, and there's no reason to think Xbox One sales would pick up after launch without any new exclusive software. Still, even the Xbox 360 managed to sell over 12,000 units in Japan a month after its launch, and it managed to average roughly 4,000 Japanese sales per week through 2010. For the Xbox One to drop this close to triple-digit weekly sales so soon after its Japanese launch isn't just a slow start, it's an anemic one.
The Xbox One's Japanese sales troubles come despite Microsoft giving away six months of free Xbox Live Gold to early adopters in the country. That promotion might not be getting enough attention, though. "I haven't seen any Xbox One ads on television," Japanese correspondent Brian Ashcraft writes on Kotaku. "There are in-store displays, but nobody knows what the Xbox One is—and if they do, all they know is that the console is bombing in Japan."
While previous Xbox systems have proven that Microsoft doesn't need Japanese sales to be a worldwide competitor in the console market, it's hard to see many Japanese developers and publishers getting excited about a system that already seems so unloved in their home country.
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