Xbox 360 Elite a hit in Japan

By Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 16 October 2007 07:14

Entertainment

Japan, the Xbox 360’s lags in the market homeland of Sony and Nintendo, but it seems the Elite model Xbox 360 has struck a chord with the Japanese.

With a HDMI port, 120GB Hard Drive and sporting a distinctively black appearance the Xbox 360 Elite is aimed at hard-core gamers and multi-media technophiles.

And this seems to be the demographic of your average Japanese consumer.  Kotuku (via the Japanese Akiba Blog) reports that several major electronics retailers are selling out of Xbox 360 Elite stock.

AsoBitCity, Gamers, Messe Sanoh and Sofmap sold all their allotted Elite units on launch day.

Great news for Microsoft, but they will still be positioned many kilometres behind both the Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3, for the week ending September 16th the Wii racked up 26,181 units sold, the PS3 13,101 and the Xbox 360 a miserly 1,243.  

Meanwhile, at the other end of the SKU scale, it seems the rumoured Xbox 360 Arcade machine is a reality, with some recent retail sightings being reported at Shack News.

The Xbox 360 Arcade will replace the Core SKU at the Cores current price US$279.99 but will include a 256MB memory unit and a disk of Xbox Live Arcade games (Boom-Boom Rocket, Pac-man, Uno, Feeding Frenzy and Luxor 2).

The Arcade machine will be an interesting marketing conundrum for Microsoft.  Obviously it is aimed at a more casual market, but retains the Xbox Live capability and a focus on downloads from that service.

But without a Hard Drive!  Sounds like Microsoft are punting on consumers seeing this flaw and taking the option of an add-on HDD at extra cost (US$99 for 20GB, US$180 for 120GB).