For a long time now, the Xbox One hasn’t been doing so well in Japan. The system has yet to pass seven figures in lifetime sales following its launch in the country two months ago and since then, Xbox of Japan head Takashi Sensui has acknowledged his concerns about the matter.
Today, Sensui announced his resignation from the company saying that he intends to stay with Microsoft in the meantime, though he will be working exclusively with its US branch instead.
Famitsu reports that the top Xbox Japan job has now fallen to newcomer Yoshinami Takahasi, who joined the company this past July after working at Sony for the last 25 years.
“It’s not as though we’re satisfied with the current sales state,” Sensui said in weeks past. “Taking the first step was very important, and as for how to permeate the market from here, we hope to continue to do our best.”
The news comes weeks after sales reports confirmed that the Xbox One has still yet to break any sales records of its predecessors, the Xbox 360 or the original Xbox.
At this time, Microsoft’s all-in-one has shifted only 38,461 units in Japan since its September release. The overwhelming majority of those unites – 23,562 to be – were sold over its first four days. Xbox 360 sold double that over two days when it launched back in 2005.
The Xbox One suffered the lowest Japanese launch for any home console in recent years – well below Wii U’s respectable 308,000 in just two days, the PlayStation 4’s 322,000 in the same amount of time, and any other machine from the last few console generations. Sales have declined ever since.
A mere 776 Xbox One consoles were sold in Japan last week according to numbers company Media Create. Comparably, the PS4’s sold 12,600 and Wii U’s sold 9,600.
The challenges facing Xbox in Japan have been attributed to both the rise in competition from mobile gaming combined with its software’s limited appeal to Japanese audiences.
The console has since begun selling in the U.S. minus its Kinect motion-control camera since this past June and is continuing to sell a variety of console bundles throughout the month and into January of next year in hopes of increasing sales stateside. Among them include a white Xbox One bundle with Sunset Overdrive, a game we thought was nothing but “Gun-Toting, Exploding, Insane Fun.”
Via Eurogamer