Xbox One Japan Launch Going As Expected
If you hadn’t felt that uncontrollable rush of excitement emanating from beyond the Pacific Ocean, the Xbox One Japan launch has begun! To celebrate, Microsoft has set up a launch party for those unable to attend the reveal media event going on in Akihabara, and the turnout is…not what one would hope for.
Accidentally ended up at the xbox one launch party in Akiba...uhhh pic.twitter.com/gieIUmcdgr
— アルヴィン@ゲーム開発者が如く (@datponpon) September 3, 2014
To be fair, it’s not completely dead outside of the media room, where a sizeable crowd that includes Harada of Tekken fame presides, but it’s not like people are itching to get their hands on the Xbox One, either.
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It’s going to be a steep climb for Microsoft to see the Xbox One Japan sales numbers surpass the Xbox 360’s already-poor sales in Japan. As of press time, the Xbox 360 has sold over 1.64 million units in the country over a span of almost 9 years. Yet, the PS4 has struggled in its first year to find Japanese developers and publishers willing to go all-in on the console market, with many of the PS4 titles also selling on the PS3, resulting in 678,000 PS4 sales (with almost half coming within launch week).
In a market that is rapidly abandoning the console experience in favor of handhelds and mobile gaming, who knows if the Xbox One Japan launch is indicative of the overall interest of the Xbox One in the region. With Xbox One-exclusive Scalebound coming from Hideki Kamiya and Platinum Games, we’ll have to see if Microsoft will start publishing more Japanese games to spark an interest in the console. Right now, without a solid base of Japanese games from Day 1, the Xbox One Japan launch is going as expected.
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