Its sales will more than likely be sub 5k in a matter of weeks.

maybe they really afraid RROD

That would still be higher than before (if it's at least over 4k)

The average Japanese video game consumer is sure enamored with their own culture. 1.3 million total Xbox 360s sold in Japan since 2005 and weekly and monthly sales and preorder charts where close to 9 out of the 10 best selling or most preordered games are created by Japanese developers for Japanese gamers.

Man, will a Microsoft console or another console from an American or other Western country ever sell there better than Sony or Nintendo?

Anyone know what the best selling Western developed game is in Japan?

WOW! 360 kicked ass this week!

And XenoBlade managed to stay above 10k! Sometimes I'm happy to see the Preview being wrong.

GO XBOX GO XBOX GO

GO XBOX GO XBOX GO

:p

Now if they'll just renew their interest in producing some jrpgs, or other japanese games...  But I think Selnor is right, casual motion games are a lot less culture specific than games in which you gun down everything in sight.  Maybe Kinect?

GTA4 i think

I think if the Atelier game hadn't released at the same time 360 woulda been > PS3 this week.

I'm guessing sub 10K next week for 360. I don't know what to make of the 360S / phat split. I suppose most MHF buyers who didn't own a 360 would have bought the 360S, with a few of them opting for the phat. Then there would be the upgraders and the bargain hunters buying independant of MHF. I think MHF is responsible for at least 10K of the lift from the previous week.

While it's great that MS can generate >15K weeks, I don't think they can sustain such sales for multiple weeks in a row. I'm not sure I share Selnor's optimism with Kinect, at least not to the extent that it will see the 360 making serious in-roads into Wii or PS3 sales.

Staying with the MH theme, I just noticed that MHP2G is closing in on 4 million.

56k for Atelier Totori, not bad.

Rorona did 44k first week (at 78k atm).

Maybe it can reach 100k, unlikely but still possible.

Not really at this point - MS deliberately held the slim launch to coincide with the MH release - and the spike is in line with other such titles on 360 without the slim so I see little evidence that the Slim sales were down to the Slim itself.

My view - sorry to be negative - is that when a 900% boost that requires a new console, a major title launch and a price cut on your old model still leaves you third behind the other two consoles in a region the news isn't actually that good, really.

This will almost certainly be a very short lived boost based on those numbers I believe.

It's the US and UK (and to a lesser extend the rest of Europe) where MS will be looking for a real, consistent response to the Slim.  Those are the regions MS needs to keep the momentum going (particularly the US) and build it's market position and sales.

I'll be very surprised if the 360 is above 10K next week without a title launch to support it.

If it does then MS might have won a bit of a reprive in Japan, but looking at the Slim on it's own it really doesn't offer anything the current model doesn't in lieu of Kinect launch so I really don't expect it to sell any better in Japan in a consistent manner at this point.