Strategy Informer  

Microsoft has had a notoriously difficult time breaking into the Japanese videogames marketplace, dominated by PlayStation and Nintendo platforms.

Japan's biggest specialist retailer Geo is "drastically scaling back" Xbox 360's presence in their stores, while an electronics chain removes it and games.


This June Microsoft finally managed to breach the 1.5 million unit sold milestone in Japan after it has been on sale for six years. Nintendo considered 1.5 million sold units of the 3DS over a period of six months when it first launched to be a complete failure.

Xbox 360's year-to-date sales in Japan are 46.7 percent lower than the previous year, although PlayStation 3 took a hit too it was nowhere near as bad at 17.1 percent. That's 72,721 Xbox 360 consoles sold year-to-date compared with 735,637 PS3s.

A report from Edge reveals "Geo, the nation's largest specialist retailer, is drastically scaling back its Xbox 360 business" and that "staff at electronics retailer Yamada Denki in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, confirmed that the company is removing hardware and software from the majority of its stores nationwide." Amazon handles Xbox 360 most in Japan anyway, apparently.

The problem is for Microsoft to convince the Japanese retailers that their next hardware console will do much better. They will need the physical retail shelf space if they plan on gaining serious headway in Japan. Does the Xbox business stand a chance?

Source: Joystiq