Quote Originally Posted by Shauna View Post
But I suppose that requires more effort than Microsoft is willing to put in and/or is capable of.
Quote Originally Posted by Wikipedia, take with a pinch of salt, I guess
While the original Xbox sold poorly in Japan, selling just 0.5 million units while it was on the market (between 2002 and 2005), the Xbox 360 performed better, but still poorly, selling only 1.5 million units from 2005 to 2011

Edge magazine reported in August 2011 that initially lacklustre and subsequently falling sales in Japan, where Microsoft had been unable to make serious inroads into the dominance of domestic rivals Sony and Nintendo, had led to retailers scaling back and in some cases discontinuing sales of the Xbox 360 completely
Link!

Why the heck would MS want to have a massive push in Japan, spending a lot of money on advertising and all that jazz, when this is their legacy so far? x}

The Japanese are just not interested.
This was my thought as well. Probably just not interested. If Xbox and the 360 both bombed, why wouldn't this one as well?

Additionally, I think it's stupid for a journalist to take photos of midnight and early hour stores saying "BUT NO ONE IS HERE!!!!!" or "THEY WILL LINE UP FOR COW TONGUE SOUP BUT NO XBOX 1?!?!!" Perhaps they don't begin camping out three days in advance for a sale like Americans do? I am sure that there are people buying it, but to indicate that people have not put their lives on hold to wait in line for something as catastrophic is a bit ridiculous. It does seem like manipulative journalism.

Also, I thought it might have something to do with pre-orders, and it looks like XB1 did in fact do pretty well in Japanese pre-orders, going so far as to sell out in some smaller independent stores.

Most probably we aren’t going to see a first day explosion of PS4-like proportions, but the Xbox One seems to be set to make a very decent debut in Japan.
(most probably?)

Basically, comparing the debut of XB1 to PS4 in Japan is unrealistic. It's great that MS is trying to expand their marketing in Japan in order to appeal to the Japanese audience more, but it's clear that the market is not preferential to XBox at this time.