The Xbox 360 litreally flew off the shelves and was sold at 3X the price on Ebay in the States. Reuters reports that Microsoft sold less than half of the estimated 159,000 Xbox 360 consoles that were available in stores in Japan in its first weekend of sales. According to Japanese Game mag “Famitsu” about 62,000 units were purchased on December 10 and 11. Actually the sales were less than half the 123,000 units Microsoft sold of its previous generation Xbox in the first three days of sales in February 2002. Editor of Famitsu Xbox 360 says the main reason being postponement of the launch of ‘Dead or Alive 4’ as about 61.5 percent of his readers had planned to buy the highly anticipated game. The game will now will be launched in December 29th, this forced many customers to cancel their pre orders and some plan to order when the game is out.

With Sony controlling a Mammoth 80 % share of the console market and strong competition from Nintendo too, Microsoft will have a hard time establishing in the Japanese market. The only advantage Microsoft has is that next generation consoles from Sony and Nintendo will be released next year, so till that time it will try to get a foothold.