14 DAY TRIAL // The Xbox One was released in Japan on September 4, and it hit the country with the force of a wet noodle, as many sources report.
Microsoft's next-gen computer entertainment system has been met with a general lack of enthusiasm, in spite of Amazon pre-orders showing a considerable interest in what the Xbox One has to offer.
Sales figures
The home console managed to push a total of 23,562 units between September 4 and September 7, as Japanese video games magazine Famitsu reports, which means that the Xbox One is actually doing even worse than its predecessor, the Xbox 360, which managed to sell in the vicinity of 60k units in its first two days.
The magazine also revealed that the console's most popular title was, by far, Respawn Entertainment's futuristic first-person shooter Titanfall, with 22,416 copies sold, mainly due to the fact that the game is available in a special Xbox One bundle in the country.
Following in its footsteps with more modest sales are Kinect Sports Rivals, which totaled 14,191 sales during the period, and Capcom's open-world horror survival action video game, Dead Rising 3, with 7,330 units sold.
Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4 and Wii U
The home console's main competitor, Sony's PlayStation 4, managed to push 310k units during its first week in Japan, when it made its debut back in February of this year. Even so, Andrew House, the head of PlayStation, admitted that the console's sales were lower than the company's projections, blaming mainly the lack of content tailored to local preferences.
The current underdog of the new generation of console wars, Nintendo's Wii U, sold a total of 308k units during its launch week in Japan, back in November 2012, and it's been the nation's top-selling home console since then.
Home consoles vs. living on the go
The Japanese market, however, doesn't favor home consoles, and is dominated by the cultural trends that have people constantly on the move, which translates into a huge preference for handheld gaming devices.
This is the reason why, month after month, the Nintendo 3DS and its cousins, alongside mobile devices, are the undisputed kings of Japanese gaming.
Mobile gaming in general is much bigger in Asia than it is in the west, where sitting down to play games on a home console is the commonplace scenario.
In any case, it's going to be interesting to see the Xbox One's evolution during the near future. Furthermore, as Japan was never a good market for Microsoft's newest console in the first place, the company might fare better in China and India.