The Xbox One has always had a hard time selling in Japan. All Xbox Platforms have traditionally had a hard time selling in Japan, even when they are coupled with a must have Japanese release (as was the case with Tales of Vesperia and the Xbox 360.) The Xbox One only sold about 50,000 units in Japan last year. As a result, some stores are now discontinuing sales of the console.
Report has come in that some stores have stopped selling the Xbox One in Japan. One store in Hokkaido has decided to cut the console and all Microsoft products completely from its stock. It is discounting all Xbox Ones, Xbox 360s, and original Xboxes by fifty percent, which is enormous.
Of course, as soon as they decide to cut the price, the Xbox One sells like hotcakes. In just one morning, the store sold out of its whole stock of Xbox One’s. This is just more evidence that the thing holding back sales of next-generation consoles is their prohibitive price. 400 to 500 dollars is a huge monetary commitment for consoles that still have very small game libraries.
We have evidence of this in the west as well. Over the holiday season, Microsoft discounted the price of the Xbox One by fifty dollars, which allowed it to briefly outsell the PS4. Not only that, but when Microsoft made the Kinect an optional component, effectively discounting the price of the console by a hundred dollars, they saw a huge sales spike.
There are a lot of factors that go into driving console sales. Currently, the PS4 is on top of the console wars, the Xbox One is in second, and the Wii U is in third. However, anything could cause these numbers to swing. The Wii U saw a sales spike when Smash Bros. came out, for example. Sony could probably also create a sales spike for their console if they discounted it, the way Microsoft discounted theirs. In short, we still have a good 5-10 more years of this console generation, so it would be foolish to say anyone has one yet. However, it currently does appear as if Microsoft is losing Japan at least.
Source: Dualshockers