Dat Microsoft consoles in het land van de rijzende zon niet populair zijn is wel bekend, maar wat we niet weten is dat de verkoopcijfers wel erg rampzalig zijn. Want er zijn maar 1.314 Japanners die afgelopen week een console hebben gekocht en dat is bijna de helft minder dan de week er voor. Of te wel.... Microsoft heeft het voor een derde keer op een rij moeten afleggen tegen over Sony.

Only 1,314 people bought a new Xbox One in Japan in the last week of reporting, a performance that follows just over 3,000 sales the week before. That puts the newly launched system well behind the Wii U and PS4, which continue to sell at least 7,000 systems a week in the country. Even the aging PS3 is outselling the Xbox One, with over 6,000 sales per week in the same time period.

Microsoft has traditionally struggled for a foothold in the Japanese console market, and there's no reason to think Xbox One sales would pick up after launch without any new exclusive software. Still, even the Xbox 360 managed to sell over 12,000 units in Japan a month after its launch, and it managed to average roughly 4,000 Japanese sales per week through 2010. For the Xbox One to drop this close to triple-digit weekly sales so soon after its Japanese launch isn't just a slow start, it's an anemic one.

The Xbox One's Japanese sales troubles come despite Microsoft giving away six months of free Xbox Live Gold to early adopters in the country. That promotion might not be getting enough attention, though. "I haven't seen any Xbox One ads on television," Japanese correspondent Brian Ashcraft writes on Kotaku. "There are in-store displays, but nobody knows what the Xbox One is-and if they do, all they know is that the console is bombing in Japan.