Microsoft thinks they did well, who can say otherwise.

You are saying exactly the same thing I am saying, and I am wrong? Please enlighten me! Or maybe you are not reading what I am saying. Let me articulate what I am saying.

Xbox sold "x" amount in 3 years. The average sale is x / 3

360 sold "y" amount in 8 years. The average sale is y / 8

To get the averages (x/3 or y/8), we need those x and y's. Well, This site starts tracking data from 2004 onwards (and Xbox was pretty much dead in 2005), so I will go ahead and make a reasonable estimate that Xbox sold around 700 K in Japan in 3 years. So

x = 700 K, x/3 = 233.33 K  (average annual Xbox sales in Japan)

Xbox 360 sales are around 1.7 million. So,

y = 1700 K, y/8 = 212.5 K  (average annual 360 sales in Japan)

Well, now that you look at the AVERAGE sales figure and see NO SIGNIFICANT change.

Now, got it?

Please don't tell me that I am wrong but stating exactly the same stuff AGAIN!

If they did so well why not launch the xbone in japan before the PS4 LOL.

They don't need really something THAT different actually to sell more than PS3, which was in significant trouble. Your arguments make sense compared to PS2 maybe, and I do think that they may have a hard time catching up with the popularity of PS2 but PS3 is a much easier rival to catch up. They may not have something like bluray BUT...

a) Blu ray did not turn out to be the game changer it was suppsoed to be. Rather digital downloads are replacing it and PS4 has it all.

b) 8 years of last gen is a long time, and people are starving for the next-gen.

c) There are still many significant improvements along with PS4 such as integrated touchpad, much larger hard disc integration, heavy emphasis on multi-tasking capabilities, integration of streaming technologies such as Gaikai

I wonder how well the new Kinect will work in smaller spaces. I seem to remember that being a complaint for Japan.

Also I remember something about 'Kinect Arcades.' Should be interesting to see how they like the new one.

The Kinect-based arcade game Dance Evolution is in most arcades here.

Since the new Kinect requires less space, it should work better here.

Who knows how Japan will work out this time around. I do think that Sony has a good chance since Nintendo has basically thrown in the towel already (Although, the Wii U will have one more holiday season to itself, but it is not looking good). Also, phones, tablets, and handhelds have a bigger impact here than in the US as it is a commuter society, and I don't know how big of an impact that will have. If people get their gaming fixes playing Puzzles and Dragons on their phones or MH4 on the 3DS, will they invest in a home system?

For all the mathematics above. A vast majority of the 360 sales in Japan happened during the first few years, so I don't think it is fair to divide by 7 or 8.

The 360 still has a decent retail presence here, usually much bigger than the Wii U.

Yeah it wasn't low.
It was virtually nonexistent!

Nothing's gonna change for the XBox One.
It will never be a contender in Japan.
John Lucas

Trying to spin the FUD again i see. They werent low they were DIABOLICALLY LOW

When you think of the grand scheme of things they didnt do too bad considering.

I mean, according to VGC 11 consoles have sold better than the 360 in Japan. These consoles have all been made by Japanese companies who know their culture better than anyone. Sega, Sony and Nintendo.

The sales are low yes, but still an improvement over the original xbox. To the person who said 360 has not done better than xbox because it has been out for 8 years compared to 3 years.

What you need to understand is the 360 outperformed the xbox in the same time frame. By quite the margin when you consider %. Though you will get a high % increase because any gain on no sales is a large % increase.

There are a few reasons why MS cannot sell much in many countries...

a) They don't have a "customer" culture. Their success is wrapped around either a "lock-in" model, in which the chicken & egg hump takes place such as the fact that everyone uses "windows" because everybody else is using windows (due to "first-move" advantage and seizing the historical opportunities). Their success at home (North America and other English-speaking countries) comes from "heavy advertising", and "tons of money pouring" to various causes. The result is lots of EMPTY market share (market share without any profits). They just cannot continue the same policy for the rest of the world since costs are much higher than benefits; so either the benefits are too low (e.g. South America) or costs are too high (e.g. Japan).

b) Microsoft has a level of bureaucracy with an unnecessarily intricate and crawling corporate mechanism, which makes next to impossible understanding the cultures beyond the immediate peripheral.

c) Microsoft has a dominant geek culture, which doesn't put enough effort and wit on aesthetics and design. Their products usually don't just have the appeal. Even when they do, they are crippled with incompetent software or ecosystem. One major example is surface, which was a technically excellent hardware with really awful usability, being a 16/9 cumbersome and heavy device that needs to be used with a keyboard mostly, shipping with a DESKTOP OS, and and a flagship software (Office) that is not crippled but also obviously not designed to work on touch, but confined to work on the desktop environment which has no other real uses! Such contrasts are not welcome in consumer's mind, and will only appeal to geeks who know how to take care such issues.

The reasons may be elaborated...