Not everything catches on around the world. Case-in-point, the Xbox 360 continues to struggle in Japan. During the month of August ’07, the Xbox 360 made up 1% of console sales in Japan with only 11,288 units sold. Let’s compare that to the Wii and DS that took close to 75% of all the console sales.
The Xbox 360’s closest competitor, the PlayStation 3, is still far ahead from the 360; Sony’s console took up 7.5% of console sales with 81,541 units sold. On the bright side though, an Xbox 360 game managed to crack the top 50, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which ended up selling 21,281 copies in August.
So what could be some reasons explaining the Xbox 360’s slump? I’d say one reason is that Japanese fans are not grasping the more "American-styled" approach of Xbox 360 titles. While that doesn’t mean developers don’t create non-American games for the 360 (which they do), but that the console is more styled to the tastes of gamers in U.S.
Nonetheless, Japanese developers have found success with American-styled games — Dead Rising and Lost Planet both sold 1 million copies each in the U.S. A handy graph, shown below, showcases the August console sales breakdown in Japan.
[Via IGN]
