Hell has frozen over: Xbox outsold PlayStation in Japan last week

metro.co.uk:

Thanks to shifting stock situations the Xbox Series S has outsold the PS5 in Japan, although both were well behind the Nintendo Switch.

The last few years has destroyed many of the certainties that used to exist in the video games industry but if there’s one thing you can still rely on it’s that the Xbox never sells well in Japan… except when it does.

No Xbox console has ever proven popular in Japan but, while it’s still well behind the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X/S is so far doing a lot better, proportionally speaking.

Recently, it’s been selling around 3,000 a week, while the Switch does over 50,000 (and often much more) and the PlayStation 5 around 10,000 – or at least it does when it has stock available, which it certainly did not last week.

You can see the full list of hardware sales below (unlike other countries Japan has always released detailed, weekly sales information) where as usual the Switch was the biggest seller with 65,322 consoles sold.

In second place though was the Xbox Series X/S, with the Series S selling 6,120 consoles and the Xbox Series X just 105 – clearly the Series X had stock issues of its own, since the week before it sold 3,508 consoles.

By comparison, the PlayStation 5 only sold 2,693 consoles, which is not an indication of a lack of demand but a lack of stock, since the previous week it sold 49,798 consoles.

Sony has been criticised for abandoning the Japanese market this generation, not just in terms of not prioritising it for stock but shutting down Sony’s internal development studio and failing to publish any Japanese made games other than Gran Turismo 7.

Microsoft hasn’t exactly filled the gap but with the Xbox Series S a lot more readily available than the PlayStation