Microsoft Announces Xbox Series X|S Price Increase For Japan

Given how little Microsoft wants to sell their consoles these days I’m just waiting for them to increase the prices in the west right for the holiday season.

They really don't want the Japanese market do they

And after Phil was saying he wants Japanese games they used to miss out on and so forth.

Where is Phil these days. Microsoft seem to have put a tight leash on him?

I guess we will see price rises elsewhere, and just around the time CoD and games are due (just like they did with games to 70, because they had some releasing).

And then of course it means Sony will probably follow.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Phil is full of it. How hard can it be to get Final Fantasy pixel remaster on xbox? About to drop money on it since its available and on sale on everything except xbox.

What? Price increase in a place where they don’t sell? The Series XS is just a black & white silent comedy now.
No one has seen Phil. Got to be on the way out.

@themightyant

Its like MS strategy now is to make sure they dont sell any consoles so they can then use that as a push for a Gamepass streaming only future as soon as possible. If its not they really need to rethink their strategy 🫣

So, the SX has gone 'up' to UK price of around £350.... isn't it still £450-£480 here?

I imagine Phil Spencer will be gone soon. Hopefully he will take Booty and Bond with him.
All incredible failures in their roles for far too long.

Great way to sell less consoles in a market that doesn't really care about the brand. They would save more money by pulling out of the market. They've been hurting relations with Japan since the DOA fiasco on Xbox in the early 2000s and just shut down studios there the past two years.

@MjJmediablogger
Spencer is almost a puppet at this stage. His strings are being pulled by the moneymen looking for a quick return on the Activision purchase.

He'd merely be replaced by a yes man.

"Lads, no one's buying our console in Japan! What do we do?!"

"Raise the price!"

"No one's buying our console in Europe! What do we do?!?!"

"Stop marketing it entirely!!!"

"NO ONE'S BUYING OUR CONSOLE ANYWHERE!!! WHAT DO WE DO?!!??!?!"

"TELL THEM THEY DON'T NEED TO BOTHER BUYING IT!!!!!!!!!!!"

@Sifi Technically yes, but the PS5 digital is still cheaper. Although the more concerning thing is if they were already struggling to sell consoles in Japan when it was cheaper, when you take away the one incentive that they had how do they expect anyone to pick an Xbox over PS5 in Japan now?

? Isn’t it selling poorly there? I am sure there is a tariff reason behind this but are they sure they will recoup the money?

@Kevw2006 Because they need every market to look as bad as possible to convince shareholders that dropping Xbox hardware is the way to go.

This will bring in tons of additional revenue when you multiply it by the single digit number of consoles they sell there weekly.

Yen has been very weak for a while now. They were definitely losing money per unit there. And it's not like sales are suddenly going to pick up when it's a pretty known secret now that the next xbox is not far away.

Wow. Just wow. Just....oh my !%#^#-ing wow.

This shall net them an extra $8000 a year in margin, while also cutting sales of near-zero down under the rounding error of margin so we can just call it zero no. Amy should be proud. I did not think there was a way to sell even less consoles, but they're inventing ways where business school says they should not exist. Microsoft. Innovation.

At this point Microsoft and AMD should cut their losses and just send everyone that bought an Xbox Series a free 6700XT and a box of caramels.

The major redemption arc of Xbox this past decade has been Phil rebuilding Japanese relationships and starting to get Xbox on parity with PS with Japanese games, which makes up probably 75% of all games I play. This rapid transition from that Xbox to this new corporate Nadella-run Xbox just over a few months has turned Xbox into the exact same call of duty box I'd ignored for half of the last generation. We had to live through Jim turning PS into a loathsome product and now get to see Satya do the same to Xbox. I should not feel better about my freaking Meta device than my Xbox or Playstation, but here we are.

@x3King84 @PsBoxSwitchOwner Phil put on a good show at "e3"/SGF and I really thought maybe things were better than we thought and he's really still energized. Right now I'm thinking Phil "retires" Jan/Feb. And Sarah won't be far behind. Their jobs must be miserable now.

@themightyant I picture Amy slapping the ruler on her desk every time Phil or Sarah say anything that sounds like it would make Xbox a desirable product. I swear they just have the AI running the company now using only the instruction of "find the highest margin solution."

@Markatron84 You forgot: "Nobody else is buying our subscription"
Raise the price!

Ah the internally destruction of the Xbox console for foreign markets right here before our eyes.
The yen is weak but what is happening at Xbox?

Xbox head of marketing for Asia: series consoles sold have sold more units than the lifetime sales of both the original Xbox and the Xbox one in Japan, we’re also closing the gap on lifetime 360 sales. This could be our most successful generation of all time in Japan.

Microsoft execs: This is a worrying development, thank you for bringing it to our attention. Effective immediately we’ll increase the price of all series consoles in Japan to try and remedy the situation.

@NEStalgia if Coke Zero can be a massive success why can’t Xbox Zero?

@NEStalgia RAISE THE PRICE ON EVERYTHING AND RUN A SWEEPSTAKES FOR A CONTROLLER WITH AN ARSE ON IT!!!!!

@x3King84 Japan is the trial market, we'll see how it goes there.

@Markatron84 LOL those controllers are the most relevant, on-brand, poignant thing Xbox has done this generation. When the closest thing to a brand identity is that Xbox is the a$$ platform, you know you've entered a new era for the medium.

And they charge more for it....

Just give Japan up already, Microsoft. Mother of god... 🤦‍♂️

I was expecting a decrease where they sell less, never thought they'd increase it. I hope they realise that was a mistake.

@WhiteRabbit they wrote about it over on Time Extension, Microsoft had a bad reputation in Japan for being too legalistic https://www.timeextension.com/features/flashback-how-a-dead-or-alive-love-pillow-gave-xbox-a-pr-headache

The Japanese Xbox community is in turmoil: the closure of ZeniMax Asia and Tango Gameworks, the Xbox Series X|S price hike. The Xbox Series X|S is forever out of stock, and Xbox advertisements are being pulled out.
At the very least, there is no doubt that Microsoft is drastically reducing the budget for Xbox in Japan.
They have no intention of popularizing it.

That sounds like a bad idea since it’s already underselling.

@xboxjapanfan game pass is actually doing really well in Japan, particularly on pc…

@jesse_dylan PC Game Pass was advertised in Japan until a few years ago. Yeah, Xbox Game Pass is not being pushed and Xbox Series X|S is not being promoted either.

@xboxjapanfan They work pretty hard to get exclusive reveals, etc. Sq-En is finally more multiplatform, mostly at their own whim, but Octopath 2 is finally on game pass. And while Visions of Mana certainly wasn't an Xbox exclusive or even GP, it was revealed first on an Xbox show with an Xbox stamp. Atlus/Sega games (particularly the RPGs) usually reveal first on Xbox, sometimes end up on Game Pass.

It's not ideal, but it's better. Or maybe this too will trickle away.

The emphasis is definitely on Switch this generation for Japanese stuff. Even PS5 has less Japanese stuff than you'd expect, and Sony has switched its focus almost entirely to the west.

Here in Brazil, MS also raised the price of the series S by about 30% out of nowhere. They stopped selling the series X and physical media as well.
So I am disappointed but not surprised, to say the least.

@fabio1 and it's my understanding that consoles weren't cheap (comparatively) in Brazil in the first place.