In my humble opinion ... After looking at the charts for Japan this gen and last, the returns for MS in Japan seem rather minimal. Why continue to shift resources to Japan if they are gonna get clobbered on a weekly basis? Why not devote more resources into Europe - the U.K. - and just forgot Japan altogether? Why is it essential for MS to get a bigger foothold in the country?

A few thousand consoles is not worth it, IMHO.

I agree. The expenses don't seem to be balanced by much potential profit and success in Japan.

If I were Microsoft I'd stop wasting so many resources there... Then again, I'm sure there is some great reason why they insist on making the Japanese accept them.

Maybe they are trying to build a small fanbase there, seeing how well handhelds do there they might want to push it if they would release one...

yes.
Japan has must of the best devs.. if you wnat them to make games on your system they need to be able to sell it in japan as well as the rest of the world. M$ will never pull out of japan.

Japan is essential for some 3rd party support. The Japanese gaming companies may have lost lots of footing but they still make a lot of games people love to play. It's best to have a console with an international audience to gain their favor. It would be odd for them to make games that their own people (who can probably appreciate their games best) can't play.

I think MS were perhaps hopeful their efforts would have yielded better results at this stage

What resources are you thinking about? The fact that Japanese sales aren't very high means that it's cheap to cut the price there.

If you're thinking about game development, has Microsoft supported much development of games which only appeal to the Japanese market?

They should focus more on the UK it is going to be a more important market than Japan soon anyway.

I'm fairly certain they're not that unhappy with the results. I mean, 360 sales are poor in Japan but same goes for the competition. I'm pretty sure that if consoles were healthier in JP in general, the 360 would be healthier as well. It's just that the Japanese are beyond consoles now. Perhaps FF15 is for the DS/DS2

Just don't forget---While 360 sales in Japan are not great, the PS3 is not doing so well either considering what it was SUPPOSED to do in Japan. Basically, this gen is a victory for MS in Japan because it has way surpassed the original Xbox. However, I bet Sony never would have thought that by this point in the gen, their overall PS3 sales in Japan would be this low. You can't just put a blanket comparison on the two.