If you thought the Xbox One would do terribly on its Japanese debut, there are signals that this might not be the case. Yesterday morning the console was made available for pre-order on several Japanese retailers, and it actually managed to top the charts on multiple of them.
The most relevant data comes from Yodobashi Camera, which is one of the biggest electronic retailers in Japan and is also pretty much seen as the go-to place for gamers to buy a new console. The Day One Edition with Kinect and two games shot to number one shortly after the pre-order was made available, and it’s still holding fast now, while the Kinect-less version is in 4th place.
Unfortunately the other major electronics chain Bic Camera does not provide a chart ordered by popularity.
On Amazon Japan the day One Edition with Kinect and two games managed to hold the top for quite a while (the chart is a weighed average based on time), before being overtaken again by the 3DS version of Super Smash Bros. The Kinectless version has been stable on third place since. Currently, they’re second and third.
On Rakuten Books (the name shouldn’t mislead. It’s also a very popular electronics retailer) the Day One edition was first for several hours before being overtaken by Freedom Wars. The Kinect-less version shown a weaker performance, peaking in 5th place and currently in 8th.
Not too surprisingly, the most popular Xbox One games are Forza Motorsport 5 (Japanese gamers love racing games and the Forza series is definitely popular) which peaked in 4th place and is now 5th on Yodobashi and Amazon, and while it held 3rd place for a while on Rakuten.
While the console isn’t sold out, even just reaching that result in Japan is no small feat for an Xbox console. Just to bring an example, inFAMOUS: Second Son, that sold over 35,000 copies in its first week, didn’t even come close to topping the charts when it was made available for pre-order.
Most probably we aren’t going to see a first day explosion of PS4-like proportions, but the Xbox One seems to be set to make a very decent debut in Japan.
