- Japanese game developer says it’s difficult for small studios to justify ports of Xbox games
- They revealed that Xbox consoles are “not even stocked” in major stores nationwide.
- Microsoft’s gaming brand has always struggled to gain a foothold in the region
A developer who worked on a farming action role-playing game (RPG) Sakuna: Rice and Ruin said some small companies “can’t afford” to spend their precious resources creating Xbox versions of titles while demand is limited.
These remarks come after Y-koichi (who is credited with working in character and environment modeling in addition to helping with planning and writing) hinted at a possible lead. Sakuna: Rice and Ruin following. In an X article that we machine-translated, they stated that “sakura 2 will come out one day.”
This prompted one fan to wonder about the possibility of an Xbox port of any potential sequel. The original game was only released on PlayStation 4, PC and Nintendo Switch.
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“Xbox, well… Personally, it’s a console that I have a strong sentimental attachment to,” y_koichi replied. “But honestly, with the size of our company, we just can’t afford to spread ourselves across multiple platforms like that. In Japan, these products aren’t even available in major retail stores.”
These comments reflect Microsoft’s difficulty gaining a foothold in the region’s console market, as evidenced by poor sales of the Xbox Series X and Series S in recent years. Japanese outlet Famitsu reported that overall Xbox Series sales fell about 75% year-over-year in 2025, with just over 31,000 units transferred in 12 months.
In contrast, more than 1,500,000 Nintendo Switch consoles and 879,000 PlayStation 5 consoles were sold during the same period.
This recent decline is easy to attribute to a series of price increases, with both systems becoming significantly more expensive in 2023 and 2024, but Xbox consoles were unpopular there long before they came into effect.
As CNBC detailed in 2019, the original Xbox was disliked by local consumers due to its bulky design. The same report highlights that Microsoft had difficulty convincing developers to create games for the platform, a problem that obviously persists today.
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