It seems as though the Xbox 360 has been a "failure" in Japan. With reports of less than half of the allocation for Japan being sold and from what I've seen first hand in Tokyo, it really does not appear that the sales are going as well as Microsoft had hoped. The first-hand reports from Microsoft employees seems as if they were drinking too much Kool-Aid when one compares their accounts of the events with actual "news" reports. Steve Ballmer was even quoted as saying, "We have very strong momentum, particularly in the northern parts of Europe, United States and Australia. I know for sure, 100 percent, we will do much better in Japan than we did with Xbox 1." Which, of course, did not happen. As stated in the previously mentioned link the Xbox "1" (as in PS One?) sold 123,000 units during the first three days of sales in Japan. The Xbox 360 sold about half of that at 62,000 units (last I checked 62,000 is not less than half of 123,000 unless there is significant rounding). Either way, selling just over 60% of the allocated Xbox 360 stock is not doing better than the Xbox "1", not even using the funny math politicians sometimes love to use.
The sales figures for the US are equally as "bleak" with the Xbox 360 selling far less than the original Xbox in the same time period. Compare this to the new and completely untested PSP's release, which sold over 500,000 units in the US in the first two days. It is also very important to note that NPD retracted their original sales data for the US, claiming that it overstated the sales data which seems to imply that the Xbox 360 sold less in the US than their original sales figures report. The NPD Group sales figures are the sales figures being reported by many websites and "analysts".
Back to Japan... There are many Xbox 360s sitting on the shelf here in Japan. Some of them at very popular chain stores like Tsutaya and Bic Camera (ビックカメラ). For reference, the Xbox 360 launch was held at a Tsutaya store. In fact, the above photo was taken at the launch store about 3 days after the Xbox 360 launched in Japan. Even sadder still, I've seen huge displays at the entrances of some stores, with people wearing Xbox 360 overcoats and often there is not a single customer interested. And this is at heavily trafficked stores. I think the reason why the Xbox 360 is a "failure" in Japan is the fact Microsoft doesn't understand Japanese gamers. It seems that Japanese gamers are most interested in Dating sims (in which case I am not even sure if there was a single Xbox dating sim), RPGs (which the Xbox 360 lacks at launch), Fighting games (Dead or Alive 4 is continually getting delayed), a few racing games (like Initial D), and puzzle games. The games for the Xbox 360 launch seem to be all first person shooters and racing games. Not very interesting. Also very, very bad are the fact there are 12 titles on the Xbox compatibility list for Japan compared to the over 200 games on the list for the US. Three of those on the list are Halo games. Not a single one of the games on the list appears to be a Japan "exclusive" game (meaning a game only available in Japan).
It also appears that many Japanese gamers are waiting for the PlayStation 3 (I know I am, but that's for a different reason... my love...). They expect it to have a larger number of launch games available and to truly support high definition, unlike the Xbox 360. Then again, Blu-ray is doomed to fail for the sole reason that Apple is backing it and everything Apple backs inevitably fails. On a "personal" note, I have no interest in the Xbox 360 as I see it as being used as a way for Microsoft to sell more copies of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.
One gotcha. SmartCrashReportsInstall API is not working correctly under i386 as of this beta. This means, you can link against it, but it will fail if you try to install it. We'll fix it in the next beta. All the rest should be pretty much good to go.
Link: smartcrashreports-103b1.dmg (529 K)