Unlike the Xbox One, the Xbox Series X will launch in Japan at the same time as other major brands, which means that the release will be seen this November. Microsoft confirmed the news in response to a question from the Japanese site Game Watch.
The Xbox One was released in November 2013 in 13 countries, but Japan had to wait until September 2014 along with several other regions, despite its great importance to the gaming industry. Some countries saw their announced release dates slip with Microsoft indicating localization issues; the Xbox One’s initial focus on Kinect and voice commands made it more complex to support a wide variety of languages.
The Xbox One did not perform well in Japan, to put it bluntly. Sales figures from Media Create place the platform at about 114,000 total units sold since its launch, including the One S and One X. Microsoft has long struggled in Japan, but that is dramatically less than even the Xbox 360, which managed to sell about 1.65 million to sell ducks at the end of 2014 and reach something of a cult following in the country.
Talk to you soon Game Watch last year, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer said it was a mistake to launch the Xbox One later in Japan, expressing a desire to hit the Xbox platform on the market. That would be a hefty sequel to the Series X in a country where even the PS4 has already been sold out by the Nintendo Switch, but it could at least see Microsoft continue its efforts to get Japanese games on the Xbox. Microsoft has recently hit deals to bring big series like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, en Yakuza to Xbox Game Pass.
