I mean, MS are willingly partnering with & paying Japanese Vtubers to advertise Xbox over there, so I'm not surprised it's seen some modest growth. The thing that irritates me is when some people act like this is the best Xbox has been doing in Japan or will be the best it's ever performed there.
Objectively that's just flat-out wrong because the 360 did much better in that territory than XBO yet we're supposed to pretend 360 never existed? Subjectively I don't think they'll be able to beat the amount of AAA Japanese support the 360 was able to garner in its time for at least the first half of that gen. Exclusives from Capcom (Lost Planet), Mistwalker, and lead platform preference for many Japanese 3P AAA games as well as having the better versions of Japanese multiplats in some instances (like VF5, at least until the PS3 got a better update)...
...truth is we're not seeing any movement like that for Xbox in Japanese support this gen. They're literally just mainly pushing for release parity of the bigger Japanese 3P games, but we'll see how much of that actually sticks around. If Soul Hackers 2 performs poorly on Xbox, for example, and the only means Sega/Atlus get those costs recouped is through a GamePass deal, then don't expect Souls Hackers 3 getting an Xbox version Day 1, when Atlus can take that time and polish up PS5 and PC versions instead, and maybe throw a Switch 2 version in there in Xbox's place (I'm still really surprised there's no Switch version for Soul Hackers 2 confirmed yet).
Something else that's irritating about this whole Xbox & Japan thing from certain people is they act like Sony's simply "given up" Japan. That's factually not true. They point to physical software sales as an indication but then fail to point that Xbox physical software sales in Japan are literally non-existent, so by that logic that should also be "troubling". Then they say that it doesn't matter because Series S is acting as the GamePass machine and, fair enough, but do they forget that PS+ exists, and it offers a lot of digital content as well? Do they forget that digital sales are still a thing in Japan, how do you think mobile games and PC games sell over there?
Just a lot of "convenient" things that get ignored in the conversation when it comes to PlayStation in Japan, just to prop up the appearance of Xbox in that region. Don't see why it's necessary. Xbox is seeing improvement in Japan and that's a good thing, but PS is doing very good in that region still and it'll do that much better once stock is consistently better. Even better still when bigger games appealing to that audience like FF and the such are available. There's no wild "danger" to PS in Japan and Xbox is still a very distant third.
But certain journalists, fanboys and content creators want a "PS is DOOMED in Japan!" narrative so badly, it's ridiculous.
In fact, Microsoft games sold the same amount as literally all the games on the PS5 combined. In Japan, the software situation looks really dire for Sony.
Something something digital sales.
Especially if the whole narrative about Xbox doing better in Japan is down to GamePass, I guess we pretend PS+, PS Store etc. do not exist?
www.windowscentral.com
give me a break...
