It’s a fairly well known and accepted fact that neither the Xbox nor Xbox 360 has lit up the sales charts in Japan. Microsoft simply has not been able to capture the interest of gamers in the home territory of Sony and Nintendo despite making attempts to reach out with JRPGs that weren’t available on PS3 or Wii — there was Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Mistwalker, The Last Remnant from Square Enix, and so on.
The period between May and June was no exception to the rule. Andriasang has posted a translation of the sales charts from Enterbrain’s Famitsu Xbox 360 magazine (courtesy of Sokuho@Hokanko), and they’re none too pretty. Between May 16 and June 12, 5pb fighting game Phantom Breaker was the top seller with 13,300 units sold. Cave-developed shooter Akai Katana Shin comes in next with 7,220 sold and is followed by Portal 2 at 5,240 and Dance Central at 4,130. Kinect sold 2,680, bringing its total sales up to 99,900 since launch.
As for the system itself, the Xbox 360 sold just 6,000 units. That brings its total up to 1.47 million. For comparison’s sake, it’s doing significantly better in the United States, where it’s outsold the PlayStation 3 and Wii for months. In March, April, and May combined, the 360 sold one million units in the U.S. alone, which should put into perspective how poorly the system has done in Japan since launch.
