Team Ninja: Xbox Has a 'Bigger Presence' in Japan, But Nintendo Dominates Japan - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 28 September 2022 / 5,921 Views
Microsoft has seen the sales of the Xbox grow since the release of the Xbox Series X|S as the latest generation consoles have already sold nearly three times that of the Xbox One. But it is currently tracking behind the Xbox 360 in the country.
The director and president of Team Ninja Fumihiko Yasuda in an interview with VideoGamesChronicle said Xbox has seen growth in Japan due to help from Game Pass. However, he says Nintendo continues to dominate the console market.
"We do feel there’s a bigger presence for the Xbox platform in Japan: we’re definitely seeing that here," said Yasuda.
"We think that Game Pass is helping a lot more people get acquainted with the Xbox platform – a lot more people are coming in and playing games and being part of that.
"However, from our perspective, just from a numbers standpoint, Japan seems to be pretty dominated by Nintendo consoles and the Switch. But yeah, we definitely are feeling in Japan that Xbox is definitely trying to take a bigger foothold with the current platform."
The Nintendo Switch has dominated console sales in Japan with sales of over 26 million units lifetime, compared to 1.93 million units for the PlayStation 5 and 0.34 million units for the Xbox Series X|S, according to Famitsu figures as of September 18, 2022.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Japan: Nintendo dominantes the market and basically is the market. PlayStation sales are pathetic, Xbox sells are below PlayStation sales by a huge margin, but sells better than it's predecessors.
It really is Nintendo and also rans at this point in Japan. PC has seen some growth too but still nowhere close to the Switch.
Once the luster came off of Final Fantasy, paired with Nintendo tapping into Japan's appetite for being able to pick up and put down a game when you want/need to, the market was theirs. Nintendo is pretty much a Japanese national treasure at this point.
well stated!
Why is PlayStation not more popular in Japan?
Because they don't give a damn about Japan since they moved their HQ to California.
Microsoft should buy the "Sammy" name. Sega is no longer using it, and might be willing to sell it, and I'd guess it still has some nostalgia/cachet with some people in Japan. And they could build up some development teams under that name, perhaps purchase some dormant IPs (Sega, Konami, and others have several) and release them under the Sammy name.
Sammy is actually the parent company of Sega. They use it on pachislot machines in Japan.
According to Wikipedia, the corporate arrangement is actually:
"Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. (also known as the Sega Sammy Group and generally Sega Sammy, stylized as SEGASammy) is a Japanese holding company formed from the merger of Sega and Sammy Corporation in 2004."
That said, interesting to know they still use the Sammy name on pachislot machines in Japan, thank you for sharing that detail. :)
Water is wet.
To paraphrase Regina George, "Stop trying to make Xbox in Japan happen. It's not going to happen."
Define "happen"
Microsoft isnt expecting to outsell the Switch in Japan and telling any games company to stop supporting a gaming nation is pretty stupid.
Xbox Series X/S is selling far far more than the Xbox One and it make sell almost as much as the Xbox 360, the endgame for us Xbox users is to stop Japanese titles skipping Xbox because of the low xbox sale numbers, which is kinda happening already.
Part of that is Japan. A lot of Japanese game developers don't want to put out products that won't get played in their home country. That's just national pride, and while you may think it's silly, that's how they are.
Part of that is that Xbox gamers in the West also don't support Japanese titles. The Xbox routinely comes in third place behind Switch and PS4/5 when it comes to Japanese titles, and that isn't just because Xbox has been in third place for the past decade. The Xbox community overwhelmingly prefers online shooters. There's nothing wrong with that. But even when it came to the 360 and PS3, where the former had a pretty commanding lead in the United States over the latter, FFXIII, a mainstream title that was released simultaneously on both consoles - in fact, IIRC, the game's US release was delayed so that it could come out same day on 360 and PS3 - the PS3 version sold significantly better than the 360 version.
why do you care?
Yeah, Xbox will never dominate the Japanese market. But why are you against them carving out a stable niche base there? Nintendo wouldn't be hurt by that. Maybe Playstation would, but that's their own fault. But most importantly, it wouldn't hurt you at all...
They did cause a lot of damage in their last serious attempt in Japan, with the 360. It got the 360 to crawl to 1.6 million units sold in Japan, which is less than a lot of first-and second-generation consoles (late 70s-early 80s) sold, and is objectively a failure. A lot of studios lost money supporting Microsoft, some of them were lucky enough to make up the losses on PS3. So yeah, it does cause harm.
That seems so oddly phrased.
Essay Pro