Phil Spencer 'Motivated' By Xbox Series X|S Sellouts In Japan

Let's hope it was a fairly high number, and not, like, 100, lol

Interesting. Without being derogatory I'd imagine the stock allocation would have been much lower compared to Europe and the US, but this is still newsworthy considering how torrid a time Xbox usually has in Japan. I hope the Xbox does well there.

Make bethesda games exclusives.
Create big AAA games consistently.
Minimizing the gap with ps4 / ps5 playerbase
And the japanese game will come, automatically

@Porridge2215 I remember when the Nintendo fanboys were spamming "SMASH BROS RELEASE DRIVES UP WIIU SALES BY 400%!!!" back in Smash's launch in 2014. Then it was something like up from 900 to 3600 lol

Let's hope they were sold to people who actually want to play them and not to be sold off elsewhere. When stock is readily available in stores is when we'll see the true picture of where they are likely to be in Japan

Now we only have to wait for the announcement of a Sega or Sonic themed xbox series S.

Everywhere sold out here within a few minutes.
I didn't manage to pre-order..

@sib I feel your pain. I live in midwestern United States so it was 10am on Tuesday when they went live for us. I was knee deep in morning meetings so I chalked it up as a loss.

Very excited by this development. Hopefully this is the beginning of the Xbox brand being widely accepted in the East. They seem to have a strategy in place, now they just have to execute it. Good luck Team Xbox 💚🇯🇵

MS is doing all the right moves!

Hopefully Xbox can get going in japan..

Only need to sell 55k in first 12 months to beat the Xbox One.

Tiny white box with a new smaller controller for a low price showcasing western shooty games, vs ginormous white box with a new bigger controller and a high price showcasing western shooty games. Series S is basically made-for-Japan.

Will they bite with the currently thinner lineup of Japanese software? OTOH, PS5 hasn't exactly been very encouraging in terms of Japanese software. They only thing they showed is FFXVII which is coming to XB a year later anyway. They may just stick with Nintendo and not give a hoot what either MS or Sony do. It's not like Sony sales in Japan are terribly enviable. It's not 35 units a week bad like X1, but it's not great.

Ultimately I think Japan is a lost cause for any box you need to plug into a wall. But if they can court Japanese devs to bring more niche games to the west on their platform, and a lot of Japanese devs are hungry to expand to the much less dead western market, then I'm all in. I don't get the feeling Sony is going to make working with them very pleasant for these smaller Japanese studios under Ryan's AAAA focused watch.

Was there like 20 systems up for preorder? Japan is a lost cause for Xbox. I just don't see this changing, the system doesn't fit the lifestyle of most Japanese gamers.

@NEStalgia they already forgot to get a Sega studio a Devkit. For which, how does that happen? o.O

Also given the tiny white box has some Western RPGs lined up for it, it makes pretty good pick me up next the tried and true Japanese colorful handheld combined for almost the price of the giant white box.

There is potential for “some” ground, but I think more so in Korea. But either way, it will be interesting to see how things play out with all three going a slightly separate route.

@RedShirtRod I was in the same boat my wonderful wife was at home with pre-order windows open. I actually managed to order one from Microsoft store at work though it was exciting and stressful

@mousieone LOL, I hadn't even heard of that. I guess they can easily "accidentally" forget about Sega since everybody knows Microsoft is going to buy them anyway.... </sarc>

Yeah, that's a good point about the WRPGs, and especially true after the Bethesda buyout. Skyrim was a big deal in Japanese gaming, somehow. It was even a major influence in Aonuma's BotW direction. Sony has FF...which isn't all that popular in Japan compared to the west to begin with.... But at this point, it doesn't look like Sony is doing much of anything at all to try to court Japanese gamers or developers. They're relying on existing loyalties from devs that are inexplicably loyal to them. I see that going 100% Nintendo's way in the next few years, and gives XBox a good opportunity to jump in and sell the western console market to them. Sony seems fixated only on the highest budget western stuff for some reason while Phil seems to be making it his mission to get back to the OG XBox days of trying to dig into the Japanese developers hard, if not the Japanese consumer.

One thing in MS's favor is that PC gaming has been rising in Japan. While consoles are abandoned, the "hardcore" have moved more into PC. With the combined XBox/PC/xCloud/Gamepass/Little-White-Box, that's a much more attractive ecosystem in Japan than the Great White. Sony Corp may still be very Japanese, but I think Shu Yoshida's the only Japanese employee left at the Playstation division these days.... They're more western than Microsoft now!

Japan's a hard market to crack for them. Most people there don't really think of XB as a serious product, but most of that is simply because they don't see it everywhere, therefore it isn't part of the background. And I think most people there that do buy a PS buy it for oddball third party Japan-only games more than any of the games Sony is actually promoting. And a bulk of that is mostly probably PSP and Vita series that lingered while Nintendo was doing the WiiU thing. Winning those games is really the key to winning Japan, and a cheap, small white box that hides on a bookshelf without the internet noticing, for months, that could get those games could easily pull ahead. People are convinced MS is buying Sega because the exact hex value of the shade of blue of their new controller in promo shots matches the shade of Sega's logo. But nobody saw the Series S sitting in plain view in every video Phil did for months on end. That's a Japan console! : P

Well, at least Microsoft will sell more of this one compared to the XBONE!!!!

Getting a foothold in Japan is going to be tough. Even Sony struggles there.

I get why Microsoft is trying, but I couldn’t care less about most Japanese games when they do come to Xbox. I guess it’s the same for Japanese gamers about the Xbox over there.

I think XCloud will be their only chance.

Gonna be the same deal as every time Microsoft has tried to make it in Japan.

Just like on the OG Xbox and the 360 (Microsoft ignorede Japan with the One) we'll get a few early JRPGs then we'll never here "Microsoft" and "Japan" in the same sentence again.

@InterceptorAlpha Normally Id agree but Gamepass isn’t a console and has a lot more wider reach. And there isn’t as a service with as sophisticated system like it in place except for it. I don’t faith in hardware, but I want to believe in the ecosystem.

@mousieone You and me both but I don't see it happening. For starters Japan is historically xenophobic anyway. Obviously exception is iPhone. That said, there really any Japanese competition whereas for Xbox there is in the form of Sony and Microsoft. They've had the Japanese games in the bag going as far back as the OG Xbox but it never caught on for one reason or another. Some tried to cite it was the size of the Xbox but given the PS3 that is debunked.

Microsoft's only real chance is getting XCloud in everyone's gands since is negates the need for anything besides a phone.

@redshirtrod

I was a little naive, thinking there wouldn't be much demand for the Xbox in Japan. But, there was..
I have a pre-order in for the PS5, but tbh not sure I can live with something that fugly in the long-term.

In the meantime, I guess I'll be buying an external SSD drive to speed up my Xbox One X..!

you love to see it. seems like series x and s are doing great worldwide so far. good times ahead i think.

@TheFrenchiestFry I think your point went over that person’s head on PushSquare. But then a lot of people have trouble with the Xbox is an ecosystem thought over console and marketing.

Anyway I suspect MS might put the xCloud Kishi in the hands of Japanese influencers next year like they did years with the Western ones. Since that’s what they want to do well. They know the box wont sell... but eh . Also, there is a very good chance When xCloud Launches in Japan, it launches with FF VII Remake.