Xbox 360 has just as the predecessor had to struggle in the homeland of the two other video game console manufacturers; Japan, where they have great faith in the native companies Nintendo and Sony. We have at several occasions reported about Microsoft’s attempts to break into the Japanese market with its new video game console through both a more appealing design and games specifically developed for the Japanese. Alas it seems Microsoft has failed and it seems Xbox 360 has a surprisingly small portion of the Japanese video game console market. In July the total sales of Xbox and Xbox 360 made up 1% of the total market in Japan. 1472 units of Xbox 360 was sold, while PlayStation 2 sold 22 288 units.
The thing that has crushed Microsoft’s marketshares in July is Nintendo’s new mobile video game console DS Lite. Nintendo has sold incomprehensible 262 454 DS Lite console in July, second on the list is its competitor PlayStation Portable with about 36 000 units. It’s the mobile consoles that makes Microsoft’s figures look extremely poor, but that it is selling less than a tenth of Sony’s current generation video game console is hardly a result Microsoft is happy with.
