It's definitely not often that we get to report on Xbox milestones in Japan, and usually when we cover Japanese sales, we don't even include Microsoft's consoles. With the exception of a brief period early in the Xbox 360 era, when then-Xbox head Peter Moore went all-in on Japanese role-playing games, the platform has led a meagre existence in the Land of the Rising Sun. Xbox 360 ultimately sold 1.6 million units (more than the other three Xbox consoles combined), which was still respectable.
The Xbox One fared the worst, selling at best a hundred consoles a week (usually only a double-digit number) at best. In total, it reached 142,000 consoles sold, which is a mere third of the original Xbox, which sold 472,992 units in Japan.
In that light, the Xbox Series S/X hasn't actually done all that badly, especially considering that a couple of major retailers have even removed the Xbox from their product lines. A large portion of the consoles are likely purchased directly from the Microsoft Store, and marketing is reported to have been virtually non-existent.
But a milestone has now been reached, and Famitsu reports that Xbox Series S/X sales have surpassed 700,000 units, broken down as follows:
- Xbox Series X (326,910 sold)
- Xbox Series X Digital Edition (31,136 sold)
- Xbox Series S (342,096 sold)
The Xbox Series S initially had a fairly strong start in Japan, but Microsoft failed to meet demand, and its brief momentum fizzled out. Whether the Xbox Series S/X will ever reach 800,000 is highly uncertain and quite unlikely, given that Project Helix is on the way.
By comparison, the Switch 2 has sold 5.8 million units and the PlayStation 5 has sold 7.55 million units.
