There’s bad first week sales, and then there’s BAD first week sales.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, the Xbox One fell into the latter category. In fact, according to Famitsu, the Xbox One only sold a record breaking 23,562 consoles, record breaking because before that, the least selling console in its first week was the Xbox 360 which sold 62,135 consoles in only two days. Famitsu also reports that the highest selling Xbox One game upon launch was Titanfall, which saw 22,416 copies sold which works out to about 95% of the amount of consoles sold. Kinect Sports Rivals took second place for launch games sold, selling a total of 14,191 copies, where Dead Rising 3 only sold 7,330 making it the third most sold game.
Now, to give some juice to all this, comparing the Xbox One’s 23,562 console sales to Playstation 4’s 322,083 and the Wii U’s 308,570, both which were in just two days, it’s sufficient to say that the Xbox One didn’t have the greatest reception in Japan.
These numbers will be a tough pill to swallow for Microsoft, and they’re in for quite an uphill struggle in the Japanese market. It’s going to be interesting to see what efforts they put into improving their presence in these markets, especially with their Xbox One launching in China in just a couple of weeks.
Why do you think the Xbox One had such a poor reception in Japan? What do you think Microsoft should/could do to improve these numbers? We’d love to hear your suggestions in the comment section below.
