because japan has many devs
because u cant abdone the third biggest console market

u just have to do it. doenst matter, if u sell some units or not...

Because 10% of the Japan's population is foreigners.

Because they thought they could still make money from Japan.

They released it in Japan to shut up the xbox fans who though it would make the console succesful! /s

Seriously, they released it there to have units available to Japanese Studios and make it seem relevant to them in some way, even if the population does not buy it much, the Japanese gaming companies are still very important to the industry (see the latest TGS as an example).

So they have to maintain at least an image of trying.

This is like adverstisement for very expensive cars that go on a billboard beside the highway, it will be seen by hundreds of thousands, but the message is only for a very small percentage of people who are very valuable customers.

Xbox is for builiding support for japanese devs.. they like to see that MS still invests in the japanese market and with every xbox sold the install base grows.. creating better software numbers in the long run.. Does it costs a lot of money for MS? shipping, printing, storage, advertising... peanuts for them..

on the other hand you have the Smartphones from sony.. sure they sell 40 million a year but the losses it makes only show that they can't compete.. they are probably selling their phones under the price of manufacturing to carriers to stay competitive.. if you sell 40 million smartphones and yet you still can't make it profitable.. you're doing something wrong.. for years.. their hope is based on an Apple and Samsung scenario that they sell 40 million a quarter instead of in a year.. which is basicly silly to think such a turnaround will ever happen. High end market is already taken by Apple and Samsung. While in the low-end they certainly will never compete with the upcoming Chinese brands. They still release phones nothing more because of prestige.. they should have cut it and dumped it years ago.

Because the reputation damage globally by not being in Japan would be far worse than the relatively minor loss of not selling much there.

Essentially; "Xbox One doesn't sell well in Japan" is a far better story than "Microsoft is unable to bring the Xbox One to market in Japan"

See bolded. I don't understand this logic.

The XB1 won't survive a few months in Japan at this rate. Stores simply have no reason to devote valuable shelf space to something that isn't selling. It's an embarrassment by any measure, and definitely a holdover from the initial plan to grow marketshare. The next sales update will have it showing a drop into the triple digit range, headed to a lifetime number sub 50k. Disaster.

Popularity. If you have a phone in demand like Samsung and Apple you can make much much better deals with carriers.. aka they pay full price for the device..
Sprint bought iphones for 15 billion! dollars.. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/05/15/sprint-chairman-defends-iphone-deal/
Sony's phones aren't popular so to make carriers carry them they have to sell them at a price with makes them attractive for carriers like Sprint, T-mobile to pick them up. If you look at the numbers they are probably giving a huge discount to carriers.. selling them actually on a loss..

Now if you have THE phone in popularity and demand the power shifts to the manufactor like Apple had with Sprint...

ITT : trying to ignore the topic of a console in Japan by discussing cell phones, lol.