From the official Microsoft Xbox Japan page:
“Dear Customers,
We are most grateful for your patronage.
As Xbox units have sold out, in many shops it is now no longer possible to procure one; this is a consequence of demand for the console far exceeding our estimates, and we apologise most sincerely to our valued customers, as well as to shops and other partners, for the inconvenience caused by this lapse on our part.
We at Microsoft are currently expending every effort in producing more Xboxes, and the next consignment of standard models is expected in September. The Elite and Arcade models are to follow. We hope you will be kind enough to wait for these additional units to become available.
Our most sincere thanks for your continued patronage of our products and services,
Microsoft Corporation
Home & Entertainment Division”
The fillip in sales is thought to be due to almost entirely to the tremendously well received latest Tales RPG title, Tales of Vesperia, with the English edition out in a matter of days, which as you will recall is an Xbox “exclusive”, for the time being at least.
With all the efforts Microsoft have been putting into rescuing the Xbox in the Japanese market, formerly a forlorn hope, it seems some success has been forthcoming, however we should probably also bear in mind that this news is great PR material, so exaggerating the nature of the shortage would surely be of interest to Microsoft.
Additionally, we might interpret the news rather less positively as Microsoft drastically underestimating sales of its own console, and so failing to stock up, or even of them deliberately engineering a minor shortage so as to provoke just the kind of article you are reading now.
Whatever the case, that the Xbox is back from the brink in the Japanese market is not in doubt, and units are still available and the restock is not far off, so Tales fans in Japan will soon be enjoying their new consoles…
If you’re wondering about the style of the announcement – that’s how they’re written in Japan: exceedingly humble and apologetic in language, although the content itself is another matter. I would expect a more crowing tone from an American or European press release of this sort.
Tales of Vesperia saves xbox japan as well as JRPG on the Xbox… where is the medal for this miracle worker?
Me and 12 mates of mine bought Xbox 360s at the first christmas of release and only one of my m8s broke (He dropped it while carrying it to mine for a Sys link match)
And Im british so does that Score one for england?
“We get gadgets slower than other places but by that time the faults are gone”
Score one for America?
Could it be that people have forgotten about ‘The Red Light of Death’ already..?
The red RING of death you speak of only seems to have happened in the first generation of 360s in the US. European models very rarely had this problem.
in canada the percentage was 1 in 4 of every xbox sold from the first line. they also refused to fix or refund them for quite a while, saying that it didn’t come with warranty. thankfully they gave in and started fixing them free of charge after getting hundreds of lawsuit threats from angered gamers, and parents of gamers.
the fact that they let something like that get through, to me is enough reason to never buy an Xbox, regardless of whether the red ring is still happening or not. its a matter of respect, and its been proven time and again that microsoft has no respect for there customers, and will gladly f♥♥k over thousands of there supporters and fans, to insure that there profits don’t drop.
not even if the Xbox is the last system in the universe and all computers have turned into man eating robots, will I ever buy a console made by microsoft.
Microsoft just fails to deliver.
Sure, they have lots of pretty good games. But how the hell do we play them games if the consoles just screw up too much.
Jin over at Ore-teki seems to have had this problem with his only a few months ago…
huh…wondered why some pigs just flew past my window.
I wouldn’t have believed it had it been anywhere but their official site…