Network now...NEWS
Xbox 360 Outsells Wii and PS3 in Japan
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has outsold both the PS3 and Nintendo’s Wii in Japan for the week ending Feb 22.
Xbox Sales rocketed to 25,334 units following the release of Square Enix’s Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope, which itself sold 162,232 units in its first week.
The sales surge marks the first time in weeks that the chart positions have changed.
Nintendo’s Wii sold 16,973 units; the console’s lowest figure yet, and a mere tenth of the sales volume the console had achieved nine weeks ago. Sales of the Wii have been on a consistent decline, initially masked by the widespread sales downturn in January, but continuing its downturn while other consoles showed signs of recovering from the new-year slowdown.
Full understanding of the Wii’s market position will be determined over the next few months, where flagging sales will either be revealed as a blip or a continuing downward trend.
The Playstation 3 also saw sales drop, falling by 2,500 units from the previous week. Sony’s home system had sold 16,149 units in total; just a few hundred behind the Wii, yet now around 9,000 units behind Microsoft’s system.
Both handhelds remain at the top of the charts, though both are more vulnerable in slipping down the ranks as sales continue to slide. Nintendo’s DSi was stung by the biggest drop in sales, down some 11,500 units from the previous week. The PSP, meanwhile, took another heavy drop in sales, moving just under 30,000 units for the week.
It means that a sales gap of around 4,000 units now separates the handhelds from the home consoles.
Full list for the week ending Feb 22 according to Media Create:
DSI/ 41,839
PSP/ 29,552
Xbox 360/ 25,334
Wii/ 16,973
PS3/ 16,149
DS Lite/ 9,975
PS2/ 5,029
Last week.
2009 Japanese sales history.
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Microsoft never had a snowball’s chance in hell in making a dent in Japan with the 360. Their aim has always been to establish a presence, something that the original Xbox failed to do. Two ‘loss-leaders’ later I think it is fair to say that they have now established that presence with the 360.
It’s a foundation to build on for the next generation which might have a stab at challenging the Japanese consoles.
Though I’m not sure it is even feasible in Japan – it is notoriously difficult to sway the consumer there. But then I remember people yammering on about how Microsoft would get their fingers burned trying to get into the industry.
It's also amusing that Microsoft is using a considerable amount of their resources to conquer the Japanese market, a market that a lot of people in this forum dismiss as insignificant.
Just because a lot of people dismiss Japan doesn't make it dismiss-able. Japan is a huge market for games. The culture is more aware of computer games than Europe and the US put together. You cannot ignore Japan.
It's rather amusing seeing Americans bemoan another country for daring to buy their own product over someone else's. Pot meet kettle, I have a feeling you'll get on like a house on fire.
This comment makes absolutely no sense, ArronC07. The very reason America has such a HUGE trade deficit is because we support (and actually prefer) foreign products more than domestic ones.
Americans have supported Japanese consoles (and electronics, in general) even more than the Japanese themselves have. Is it really so wrong to think they would give our products a fair shake since we do so for theirs?
There is no question that the Japanese culture is highly xenophobic and simply will not support American electronics or automobiles. Oddly enough, they love American cultural products though (clothes, movies, music - if you can call those cultural).
He's right about the gold standard but the other reason for the huge trade deficit is the fact that the Japanese do it certain things better and America can't compete.
Rather than guilt tripping people into buying inferior shit (which never works anyway) Americans should focus on making decent cars, electronics, etc. at a decent price.
The reason why you have a huge trade deficit is because of the Bretton Woods agreement which saw the Gold Standard (a natural physical break on debt build up) replaced by the Dollar standard backed by US Federal Reserve bonds (a make believe system which promotes indebtedness in order to function).
You're not one of these gold standard nuts, are you? No, the US has a huge trade deficit because we import far more than we export - regardless of what standard would be used.
Learn something: http://mises.org/story/1386
(that was posted in 2003 by the way)
So an Enterprise Software Analyst is now a financial expert?
double post.
Eh, what? I'm European by the way.
I'm British.
The Japanese have to be some of the most biased gamers on the planet. They're the type that won't play a game if it's not Japanese developed and won't buy a console because it's not "Made in Japan" or doesn't originate from Japan. Extremely shallow minded to say the least.
MS can't win in the Japanese market due to the very reason above.
The 360 arguably has the best games of all the current gen systems and still it's struggling against the PS3, a more expensive console that has 2.5m systems sold (so far), while the 360 hasn't reached the 1m mark yet in the Japanese region.
The 360 has some good, but not great JRPG's, and it'll take more than a JRPG every 6 months to make a heavy mark within the Japanese market.
Yet saying that...maybe it's not the system that's the problem, but the biased Japanese consumer!?
I def agree. I think the Japanese market has a tendency to stay away from American developed devices. The iPod so far has been the only device built in the US to make much of a dent. I read a statistic once (the article was talking about the very thing your bring up) that the iPod has about a 50% market share in Japan, where everywhere else it has an 80-90% market share of portable digital media devices (maybe why the 360 kinda looked like a big iPod, at least with its simplistic design). I think a US developed device can be successful, but even the mighty iPod doesn't do quite as well as it does in other regions. Maybe a little bit of prejudice???
To be fair it's not just American developed devices that do poorly but anything not made in Japan, the Korean giant Samsung for instance, the biggest consumer electronics manufacturer in the word, just can't shift it's products in Japan. It must be great for Sony and Nintendo to have such a loyal home market.
I wasn't aware of that. Makes you think a bit how things may or may not have worked out so far over there if it weren't for Japan's apparent discrimination toward non-Japanese products. It does seem a bit interesting that the Wii is plummeting the way it is (in Japan). I think the "casual" gaming fans in Japan may be a tad less naive when it comes to what they're actually investing in. Before some of the more vocal Nintendo supporters (I'm looking at you Ozzy/Ken/Zach) consume me with fireballs from their eyes and bolts of lightning from their arse (another Braveheart reference, sorry just love that movie) I just mean that for the non-true Wii fans in the US, the elmo-level fad fans of the Wii get it just because it's the hot item without really knowing what truly to expect out of the system and I think the casual Japanese audience is a bit more educated in gaming than the "I'll buy anything that is hot" new fans of Wii in the U.S. The same people who didn't know video games had expanded beyond the blips and bloops of the NES days are the ones that I'm referring to. I just think the Japanese market is becoming less interested in the Wii based on their own likes/dislikes and the US casual audience will continue to buy it based purely on it's remaining popular months. I wonder if a similar drop in sales will occur here once the hype ends (if it ever will that is)?
Or it could be that most of the people that'd buy one have already....
Wikipedia says the Japanese population, as of 2007, was 127 million. Any idea of Wii sales to date in Japan? We could then find, roughly, the total % of the population that has one.
I just saw a chart a few days ago that had the LTD sales at <8 million (uhh 7.8 or something like that...)
Well, 8 million out of 127 Million makes 6.29%. So about 6.3% of the entire population of Japan has a Wii. Not sure if that's a lot or not. Also, i assume there won't be 100% since i doubt there's 1 Wii per person, more like 1 Wii per household. If we assume an average of 3 people per house, that means the 127 Million becomes 42 Million households. That would mean 19% of households have a Wii. Seems to me that's still plenty of households that could still buy one, even if we're lowballing or highballing it here. So, i don't think market saturation is the case. If 1 in 5 households has one, that means they just have to give 4 out of 5 households a reason to want one.
From a personal standpoint, the Wii software lineup has been weak since the later part of the year, and doesn't look terribly hot upcoming. I think the weaker software lineup then the past is to blame.
Lifetime to date sales of the PS2 in Japan is around 21 million and it's taken 9 years to get there. The Wii has done 38% (over a third of that) in just 2 years, there is bound to be a slow down, it's still selling on normal weeks stupidly more than the 360 and Nintendo still has a licence to print money. The Wii is not dead and the 360 is never going to be more than a distant 3rd in the Japanese home console market.
I agree the Wii is far from dead in Japan. And it'll never drop to 360 levels consistently. But you have to admit, the sales drop since the beginning of the year is quite noticeable. And there has to be a reason. Perhaps Japan being in a recession is hitting Nintendo harder then other gaming companies?
Or maybe we are just seeing the console settle down after 2 years of utterly stella performance? It will never drop to 360 levels at all because actually what has and will happen is that for the odd week the 360 might RISE to Wii levels. The norm is that the 360 does really poorly despite being the cheapest console on the market, that norm isn't about to change.
I suppose that's probably the most accurate of describing it. If we take PS3 sales as a marker for "normal" sales of a console in Japan, then the Wii leveling off with it shows Wii sales dropping to "normal" levels. I think what you're saying is probably the most accurate.
Good point Ozzy. (About Wii's software).
double post
This success is game-specific to Star Ocean 4. It's only for one week. But I will not be surprised if Microstuffed repeats this success in the future. Bill Gates has finally seen something to conquer after the OS industry . He can't make a dent on Apple's domination (because Msoft's products really cannot match Apple's quality standards), so he's going after the videogame industry. For all his dosh, he can easily buy the whole of Japan and put windows on every kind of household appliance.
The obvious step for Microstuffed from here is to buy every exclusives that they can for the Xbox. Even if it sells or not, what's a few gazillion dollars for Bill? Some charity donors might suffer, but hey, Microsoft wins.
I guess you missed the news that Bill Gates retired from MS last summer. Do you have a problem when Sony buys exclusives?
Retired, all right. But He's still pushing Xbox 360 behind the scenes. Apparently, he's got his sights also on Korea (and probably their fabulous MORPGs)
http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/19/bill-gates-gives-mother-of-pearl-clad...
'Bill Gates gives mother of pearl-clad Xbox 360 to South Korean President
May 19th 2008 at 5:21PM
Bill Gates has commissioned 100 mother of pearl-clad Xbox 360s to be used as extra special gifts, the first of which was given to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak earlier this month, prompting a response that we can only imagine to be, "gee, thanks." To be fair, the design by Korean artisan Kim Young-jun is a bit classier than most of the crystal-encrusted gadgets we come across, but the same can't quite be said for the move of bringing a bit of thinly disguised self-promotion to a visit with a head of state. We can also only assume that Gates is dreading the day that the President calls him up and asks him what the red rings on his Xbox mean."
ROFL for that last paragraph
I must say, I'm quite shocked. The japanese's deovtion to specific franchises is incredible.
Or maybe it's just their lack of faith/interest in titles for the 360 that aren't flight sims or JRPGs. But I guess games on other consoles sometimes have the same effect so maybe you're right. There were 160k copies of Star Ocean sold in a week and only an additional 16k consoles sold. Not a huge number, but they more than doubled their console sales.
In the interest of increasing accuracy and limiting sensationalism, shouldn't the words "this week" be appended to the end of the article's headline? Can we see the lifetime-to-date Japanese sales for a little context? Or would that spoil the pro-Microsoft puffery quotient? It just seems like a slippery slope. Next we'll be seeing a "story" about how one particular Bic Camera sold three 360s in the last half-hour and only one PS3 so ZOMG MICROSOFT IS TOTALLY WINNING JAPAN!!!!1!
Also, given the amount money Microsoft is undoubtedly shelling out for these exclusives, the next logical step is for them to just spend that money buying 20,000 360s in a week to goose the numbers, assuming they aren't doing that already. I wouldn't put it past them.
Dude everybody knows that the Xbox 360 is bombing in Japan, we all know that is ALWAYS in the last place, check other sites and they will report the news just like Edge did, some wont but the points is that even with your sarcasm of example :
"Bic Camera sold three 360s in the last half-hour and only one PS3 so ZOMG MICROSOFT IS TOTALLY WINNING JAPAN!!!"
No one in their right mind will think that, we all know they are second to last place in Japan just behind the venerable PS2 (a last gen console), but to come up with them spending money just to buy their own consoles is too much of a conspiracy theory don't you think?
I mean, I also heard somewhere that they kidnapped a baby in Australia and blame it on a Dingo, haven't you heard that one?
By the way why only make an example of the PS3 and not mention the Wii?? That's sounds like you have a PS3 and need to defend your console purchase. I own a Wii a DS and a PSP in case you wonder so don't try a fanboy conspiracy theory on me please.
Microsoft is not a perfect company but they are not the devil. Give it a rest..
Site regulars know these numbers get updated weekly. I think that's why they didn't mention it.
That's an interesting suggestion about buying their own consoles. If it costs a million to secure a exclusive, is it cheaper just to buy that many consoles and leave them on street corners for people?
Brian
www.brianwoods.com
"is it cheaper just to buy that many consoles and leave them on street corners for people?"
Naa, cause what MS is really concerned about is tie-ratios and 3rd party success. If they bought the consoles themselves, they'd also have to buy games too to please publishers. So if the absolutely crazy notion that they buy the consoles is true, that means they also buy the games too since they have such a good tie-ratio. Is it possible that maybe the 360 isn't so bad afterall and maybe it actually is just a successful system?
And as far as positive 360 news is concerned, there's been quite a bit more positive PS3 news lately and we 360 supporters haven't been all up in arms. (I remember congratulating Sony on their 20 million PSN users story, and their 20 million consoles sold worlwide story, I didn't freak when EDGE put those articles up). Relax everyone, it's just a news story, there's no need to be afraid. ^^
edit: I didn't notice the last part you mentioned 30FPS (I think that was you). You said if they left them on street corners. I think if they were to do that, it would hit the news (if they were buying that many). And where would they buy them from? Retailers? If so, they'd have to hire people to pose as real customers which would just cost more money. The whole idea is idiotic and shouldn't have even been brought up. It seems it kills so many people that MS is doing so well this generation compared to the PS3 that they need to at every turn find a way to take away from that. Buy their own console? what a load.
Site regulars know these numbers get updated weekly. I think that's why they didn't mention it.
Fair enough; even I felt half-hearted in my critique. Let the babies have their bottle--THEY PAID ENOUGH FOR IT.
If it costs a million to secure a exclusive, is it cheaper just to buy that many consoles and leave them on street corners for people?
Any student of (business/technology) history knows that there is no tactic too shady for Microsoft, no company that will stoop lower. I challenge anyone to point to one example of a Microsoft product succeeding in the marketplace based solely on its quality being demonstrably better than that of its competitors. *crickets chirp*
I think your tin-foil hat is on too tight today, DubsTF. Is it really so inconceivable that consumers in Japan would buy the only system which plays one of their top selling and most beloved J-RPG franchises? Also, you must have failed as a student if that's what you came away with regarding business/technology history.
DubsTF even you must be aware of the Japanese attitude to non domestic hardware. M$ should get credit for being able to sell any hardware, let alone toping the chart. Yes, we all know things will return to normal next week, but at least M$ are making an effort in Japan.
Yakuza 3 shifted 230K in it's first day in Japan, so we'll see where the PS3 is next week on the hardware charts. I'd be surprised if the system wasn't at No.1 for that week.
The fact that the Xbox 360 outsold the PS3 in Japan during the second half of 2008 is the result of all the great games available for Xbox 360--especially the exclusive RPG games.
In Japan it is no longer a surprise when Xbox 360 outsells Wii or PS3. Xbox 360 may be an American console, but Xbox 360 is fully expected to see high sales when great games like Tales of Vesperia, Infinite Undiscovery, Star Ocean, and The Last Remnant are released.
Microsoft originally kept their goal for the Japanese Xbox 360 very simple: "Just do better than the original Xbox so that a step on the ladder of success is climbed."
Well, Microsoft has far exceeded that goal in Japan! Microsoft has done so well with the Xbox 360 in Japan that the next Xbox console can literally have a goal of becoming the dominant Japanese platform!
Well Kim_Naroz, I can have a GOAL of being the next president of Paraguay, but does that mean that goal is likely to ever happen? There's having goals and then there's having REALISTIC goals. Yes, the 360 has definitely made progress over the Xbox 1. But to say the next one could be the dominant Japanese platform is a fairly ridiculous statement, even if your company does tell you to say it.
athlete_gamer said:
Microsoft has done so well with the Xbox 360 in Japan that the next Xbox console can literally have a goal of becoming the dominant Japanese platform!
Blind faith indeed!
Whisky, by nice to Kim! He doesn't know any better. ^^
Interesting how Japan console sales are still so dependent on individual game releases. It seems like that mentality has shifted in the US, where even games like GTAIV didn't have the slightest impact on monthly console sales. Instead, sales seem more dependent on overall game library/features/price, rather than one specific game.
I agree, although I do wonder if it would be the same if Star Ocean has been released to multiple formats.
I wonder how much of the success of the Xbox in the Japanese territory is down to strategically grabbing select titles that have always been strong on Japanese systems.
[As a side issue, I wonder if Star Ocean will make the journey West ? I am a great fan of Japanese games, though sadly here in the UK there is a shortfall of games making the PAL conversion, this has been the case for a couple of generations now. You NTSC boys and girls have all the fun. PAL in a lot of case doesn't seem to be as viable option, why is this? The PAL territory encompasses most of mainland Europe has a user base as large as the American and Japanese markets, yet seemingly NOT large enough to warrant conversions, It feels like we are being sold short!! We're still waiting on and might always be waiting on Persona 4, Namco X Capcom and Front Mission 4 to name a few of the more popular. Although thankfully there are ways around this, fan translations or modding, but it would be nice to gaming adopt a universal format for all the territories so we are free to play whatever games we like from wherever we like..]
Oh, I have little doubt that 360 sales would have been a tiny fraction of what they are if this had been multiplatform. MS has definitely made a serious effort (and investment) to secure J-RPG exclusives in Japan, knowing that was probably the only hope they had of making any impact in that territory (however slight).
Personally, I'm not so sure it's worth the investment, considering how insignificant the Japanese market has become for home consoles and their protectionist attitude towards electronics. However, I understand that MS also probably factored in getting Japanese developer support for the system to enhance their game library world-wide and just wanting to be a general annoyance to Sony on their home turf.
I think they are doing it just to court Japanese developers. If you have a platform that sells, maybe some of them will want to make a game for it, then they can bring it stateside and make some cash. It's already worked with Square.
If Sony had any money, they could retaliate, but...
Brian
www.brianwoods.com