I think a large part of it - that 35% - has to do with the Xbox's horrible history of a short lived product that offered very little.
Wind the clocks back to the launch of the Original Xbox - it had a very good debut. It actually outsold the PS3's debut, and sold over 120,000 hardware units according to VGC on it's first week.
But the success was very short lived due to 2 things:
- Bad, non-appealing design
- Total lack of J-centric software
Because of those 2 things, Japanese have remembered and are much slower to accept the new competitor. They've had a tendancy to do this for just about every new manufacturer. Look at Sega and Sony for a good history - neither console was ravenously adopted, initially, but did very well once it caught on.
Then go to the Xbox 360's Japanese launch: it sold a paltry 55,000 units - less than half the Xbox's launch, and that was a February (Xbox) launch versus a December launch for the 360. The Japanese certainly remembered the Xbox when considering the 360.
Despite all that, things have certainly been improving for the 360. Has it done spectacularly? No. But it has certainly shown that it can do a decent job of shaking off it's bad image. Despite a horrible start, it's doing decently now. Maybe not insane numbers, but you can't argue that the 360 is doing bad this year when the 2009 YTD cume has totaled every other year the 360 has been on the market combined.
Also, the comments that Japanese reject the 360 due to it being American is a slam on Japanese culture. The 360 doesn't appeal to Japanese because it's American, but because it doesn't incorporate more Japanese sensibilities into the design.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
