It’s no secret that the Xbox One suffered a resounding failure in Japan with sales virtually stalling in some weeks. While the Wii U did better in the archipelago, it didn’t get a public vote either. And oddly enough, the two consoles were somehow linked until last year in Japan.
The amazing statistics of the day come to us from the account Twitter by Alex Aniel.
Picked up Famitsu’s comprehensive Japan sales report for 2019. I found two data points very amusing:
– The top selling Wii U game of 2019 sold more than the top selling Xbox One game
– Said top-selling Wii U game was Minecraft Wii U Edition, published my Microsoft Japan
— Alex Aniel (@cvxfreak) November 1, 2020
The head of commercial development of BraveWave Productions (and author of an upcoming book on the history of Resident Evil) has indeed obtained the report of video game sales in Japan for the year 2019 published by Famitsu. And the latter contains the statistics we are talking about here.
According to Famitsu, the best-selling Wii U game in Japan in 2019 sold more than the best-selling Xbox One game in the Japanese archipelago over the same period. And, ironically, the Wii U game in question is … Minecraft: Wii U Edition, a game said by Microsoft Japan. This is just one more example of the rationale for Microsoft’s decision to continue releasing Minecraft games on consoles other than Xboxes.
Hard to do worse
FYI, Nintendo has sold fewer Wii Us than Microsoft’s Xbox One worldwide. But in Japan, the two machines do not play in the same category. When Switch sales exceeded those of Wii U in Japan in early 2018, the Wii U was 3,301,555 copies cast in Yoshihiro Suga’s country. For their part, the consoles of the Xbox One family are only 114,552 machines sold at the end of October 2020.
Given the cardboard of the Switch in Japan, a platform on which Minecraft also sells very well by the way, the Xbox Series X / S will certainly not come to compete with the Nintendo console in its territory. The first signs as to the future of next-gen Xbox consoles in Japan are in any case encouraging. Indeed, the first consoles intended for Japanese pre-orders found buyers in a few minutes (the exact quantities were not communicated).
