Xbox Outsells PlayStation In Japan For The First Time In Nearly A Decade

Sometimes, miracles do happen. Historically, the poor, dear Xbox has never sold well in Japan. In fact, this March, it was revealed that Microsoft had only managed to sell a total of 2.3 million consoles, across all its iterations, since they first started being sold there in 2002. Which, y’know, really isn’t good - the Nintendo Switch sold 5.1 million units there last year alone, for comparison.

There’s never been one specific reason why it didn’t take off, but the brand has just never gained a decent enough amount of traction for it to truly rival the consoles from Nintendo and Sony. However, for a week at least, the tables have turned - as reported by TheGamer, the Series S has outsold the PlayStation 5 in Japan for the very first time.

Before we get into it, be sure to take a look at this super satisfying Xbox 360 restoration, below.

The sales figures were brought to light by the business manager of Limited Run Games, Alex Aniel, who pulled up the numbers for 9 May to 15 May from Famitsu. The Series S managed to sell a respectable 6120 units, eclipsing the PS5’s sales (from both the Disc and Digital editions), which came in at 2963. As noted by @GameDataLibrary on Twitter (via VGC), this is the first time since the launch of the Xbox One in 2014 that Xbox has outsold PlayStation - it’s a phenomenon that’s only occurred 10 times over the years.

You may notice that only the Series S figures were quoted, there. Yeah, the Series X’s numbers are barely worth mentioning, but they’re pretty funny in comparison, so I’m going to anyway. Microsoft’s higher-powered console managed to shift a paltry 105 units last week, which is just slightly embarrassing, isn’t it? As TheGamer writes, this might be due to the fact that there’s a lack of 4K TVs in Japan, making the pricier of the two consoles a bit less worthwhile. No matter anyway, because Xbox is still the clear winner here.

Overall though, Xbox still has a lot of catching up to do in Japan. Last year, Xbox Series consoles sold almost 10 times less units than the PS5 (95K as opposed to 942K), so Microsoft probably aren’t getting too excited just yet.