December 13^th, 2005 (4:24pm) - Microsoft representatives have admitted that the original Xbox sold terribly in Japan and in an effort to not repeat this territorial sales failure, the company has put the effort into making the Japanese launch of the Xbox 360 somewhat successful. Well, according to reports out of Japan the Xbox 360 has in fact sold less hardware and software compared to the launch of the original Xbox.

According to Japan’ most trustworthy sales tracking research firm, Media Create, within its first two days of sale, the Xbox 360 has sold approx. 42,000 units of hardware. Another research firm, Enterbrain, is reporting approx. 62,000 units sold for that same launch window. It’s being estimated that 159,000 units of the console were made available to Japanese consumers.

In comparison for its first three days of sale in Japan, the original Xbox game console sold 123,929 units and a software-hardware tie ratio of 1.45 pieces of software for every system sold. The tie-in ratio for software sold for each Xbox 360 console bought is even worse, being 0.91. Meaning, that for each game console sold, less than one game was purchased by Japanese consumers on average.

It should be noted that Japanese games are getting more value for the amount of money they are paying for the Xbox 360 compared to North American and European gamers. Only the "Premium" version of the console is on sale in the land of the rising sun and it’s retailing for a cost less than what overseas gamers are paying for the "Core" package of the console, which does not come with a hard drive, wireless controller, HD cables, etc..

Despite these poor launch sales figures, Microsoft’s position in Japan could improve thanks to the increased amount of Japanese game software in development for the platform. However, at the current time things do not look well for Microsoft in Japan.

The Nintendo DS is once again expected to be the best selling piece of gaming hardware for the week of the Xbox 360’s launch.