Because of the precident set by the last generation. The 360 did not have a built in userbase, the PS3 Does. Neither are selling, the 360 is selling FAR better than it should be, and the PS3 is selling FAR worse than anticipated.

 True That.

I also think that huge userbase Sony had with the PS2 had something to do with it.

ps3 is selling far less than expected but still selling 4 times better than the 360 in japan... why is this even a discussion??? MS has no chance in japan thats already proven... maybe on MS 720 they will have a chance but not this generation

I don't think anyone honestly believes that the 360 will be a real success in Japan... But they're showing improvement. I think 2m+ units sold in Japan would make them happy at this point, which is about 4 times what Xbox sold.

Then maybe next time around they can work on a little quality control and some real Japanese sales.

i dont see the point of it either.. ps3 and wii have outsold it during their first  month.. people are happy that its doing 10k a week yipppeee

PS3 doesn't have a power brick or wireless router sticking out.  Also, games like VF5 and Gundam Musou are not on the 360 yet.  Japanese also know FF13 will be on the PS3, and as well as MGS4.  They also probably assume that all of their favorite PS2 fanchises will see sequels on the PS3, even if some of them are going to the 360 (but not the Sony ones, of course).  Finally, most 360 exclusives are shooters.  

Windbane - Which is exactly why the 360 is selling 3k units and the PS3, 10k units a week. Once MS gets a few more games pumped out, I feel that this Christmas, the 360 might get close, or even overcome the PS3 *IF* there are no major H-2007 games out (no MGS4, FFXIII, ect). If DMC4 was the only major game in Japan, and the 360 version was out too, I'd expect the PS3 to do crap for sales, and the 360 to do fairly well with Lost Odyssey.

mrstickball, you really have some wild expectations for XBox 360 in Japan that no way will happen. They will not sell 120k units until July. At the moment they're selling around 3k per week, so in 12 weeks they must be happy to sell 50k. At the moment month after month sales for 2007 are only going down, so why it would it pick up to an average of 10k per week for 3 months in a row? The remark about XBox 360 overcoming PS3 is hopefully referring to weekly sales, not total sales, cause that will never happen. Even outselling PS3 in the holiday season seems highly unlikely at the moment. PS3 is not doing well in Japan, but at the moment it is still easily outselling XBox 360 week after week. And it still has more titles focused on the Japanese market compared to XBox 360.

I think Japan is all about brand names.. they bought the console because it's Sony. If you look at the Hardware vs Console ratio, you'll see that they only own 1.3 games per machine. Software - 1,176,122 Consoles - 905,227 Ratio - 1.3 : 1 Clearly they don't own a PS3 for the games, they use it as a BD player unless your telling me that they've been playing the same game since Launch.