Microsoft’s Xbox Series S and X consoles are doing much better than the Xbox One in Japan. The latest sales update came from Japanese magazine Famitsu, according to which Xbox Series S sold 2,920 units this past week, while Xbox Series X sold 527 units. In total, the two SKUs have sold 102,591 units (64,284 units of the Series X and 38,307 units of the Series S) less than a year after the November 10th, 2020 global launch.
This is significant in comparison to the previous Xbox One console, which took over four years to sell 100K units in the land of the Rising Sun. According to analyst BenjiSales, the Xbox Series S and X may even outsell lifetime Xbox One sales by the end of this year.
Xbox Series X|S has now sold over 100,000 units in Japan
For comparison it took Xbox One over 4 years to reach 100k in Japan. Xbox Series X|S did it in less than a year
Xbox Series has stronger than expected momentum in Japan and could outsell Xbox One lifetime by end of 2021 pic.twitter.com/11kmsESXY8
— Benji-Sales (@BenjiSales) October 14, 2021
Great news for Microsoft, even though the Xbox Series S and X are still far from anywhere near the volume of sales enjoyed by Nintendo and Sony platforms in their own homeland. The PlayStation 5 console sold 15,885 units the past week between the regular and digital editions, for a total of 1.1 million lifetime cumulative sales; the Nintendo Switch sold 179,851 units this past week between the standard edition, the Nintendo Switch Lite, and the new Nintendo Switch OLED. Lifetime cumulative Nintendo Switch sales in Japan amount to 21.4 million units between the various editions.
Still, Microsoft is working to attract even more Japanese and Asian customers. At the recent Tokyo Game Show event, they announced the availability of Xbox Cloud Gaming in Japan, the commitment to partner with over 200 Japanese indie creators through the ID@Xbox program as well as Game Pass, and the full Japanese localization of Bethesda Game Studios’ Sci-Fi RPG Starfield, arguably the most anticipated Xbox exclusive on the horizon despite being over a year away from its planned November 11th, 2022 launch date.
