- A Japanese game developer has said that it’s hard for smaller studios to justify Xbox ports of games
- They revealed that Xbox consoles are “not even stocked” in major stores there
- Microsoft’s gaming brand has consistently struggled to gain a foothold in the region
A developer who worked on farming action role-playing game (RPG) Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin has said that some smaller companies “can’t afford” to spend their precious resources creating Xbox versions of titles when there is limited demand.
The remarks come after y-koichi (who is credited as working in character and environment modelling in addition to planning assistance and writing) teased a potential Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin sequel. In an X post that we have machine translated, they stated that “Sakuna 2 will come out someday.”
This prompted a fan to ask about the possibility of an Xbox port of any potential sequel. The original game only released for PlayStation 4, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
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“Xbox, well… Personally, it’s a console I have strong sentimental attachment to,” y_koichi replied. “But honestly, with our company’s manpower we just can’t afford to spread ourselves across multiple platforms like that. In Japan, it’s not even stocked in major retail stores.”
The comments reflect Microsoft‘s struggle to gain a foothold in the region’s console market, evidenced by poor sales of both the Xbox Series X and Series S in recent years. Japanese outlet Famitsu reported that overall Xbox Series sales had dropped roughly 75% year-on-year in 2025, with barely more than 31,000 units shifted in 12 months.
In contrast, more than 1,500,000 Nintendo Switch and 879,000 PlayStation 5 consoles were sold in the same period.
This recent decline is easy to attribute to a string of price hikes, with both systems becoming significantly more expensive in both 2023 and 2024, but Xbox consoles have been unpopular there well before these came into effect.
As detailed in 2019 by CNBC, the original Xbox was disliked by local consumers thanks to its bulky design. The same report outlined that Microsoft was struggling to convince developers to create games for the platform, an issue that evidently persists today.
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dash.wood@futurenet.com (Dashiell Wood)
