14 DAY TRIAL // The latest hardware and software report from Japanese video game industry analysis firm Media Create reveals some particularly interesting information, as it includes the launch week figures for the Xbox One and its most popular games.
The data shows that the Nintendo 3DS has 7 games in the top 20 software sales chart, with the PS3 and Xbox One following with 3 each, and the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita each having 2 games listed on the list of popular titles in Japan.
Hardware sales
Microsoft launched the Xbox One home console on September 4, and the data shows that the company managed to push 25,674 units in the four-day period the data pertains to.
The Nintendo 3DS is once again the king of Japan, sitting comfortably at 29,555 units sold, a decrease since last week. The podium is closed by the PlayStation Vita, selling 15,351 units, dropping 25 percent from last week's sales.
The Wii U and PlayStation 4 are around the 7k mark, while the PlayStation 3 rests just above 6k units sold. While the PS4 managed to surpass last week's sales, it's still not doing as good as Sony would like it to, mainly to the lack of games tailored for Japanese consumers' tastes.
Software sales
First on the list and still going very strong since its launch in July, Nintendo 3DS Japanese role-playing game Yo-kai Watch 2: Ganso / Honke, with 63k units pushed during the September 1 to September 7 period, amassing a global sales figure of 2.4 million units sold.
Second on the list is another 3DS JRPG, in the form of the just-released Dragon Quest X Online. Square Enix' creation pushed 52k units since its release on September 4.
Toukiden: The Age of Demons Extreme with 26k sales and Love Live! School Idol Paradise with 12k show that the PlayStation Vita still has a considerable fanbase in the Land of the Rising Sun.
The three Xbox One titles featured on the list are Respawn Entertainment's sci-fi first-person shooter Titanfall, with 8.9k sales in its debut week, followed by Capcom's open-world horror adventure Dead Rising 3 with 7.7k units, and Forza Motorsport 5 with 5.9k.
It's difficult to mark this as a disappointing launch for the Xbox One, since Microsoft's chances to become a huge success in Japan were slim, considering the problems that the Xbox and Xbox 360 had in the country.
This, in addition to the fact that Japanese consumers are oriented toward the handheld and mobile gaming market, makes selling home consoles an uphill battle even for the locals, Sony and Nintendo.