Half-Year Xbox sales disastrous for Microsoft

Yesterday in Japan, half-year sales figures were released, with percentage breakdowns by publisher, across all formats and per-platform hardware sales.

In amazing news, Xbox manages to scoop only 1.6% of the hardware sales in the key territory in the last six months, truly a disaster for the console's eastern push.

The full breakdown reads:

PlayStation 2 - 58.5 %
Game Boy Advance - 28.6 %
GameCube - 8.3 %
PSOne - 3.7 %
Xbox - 1.6 %
Dreamcast - .6 %
Game Boy Color - .3 %
WonderSwan Crystal - .2 %

The fact that Microsoft's machine is finally outselling the Dreamcast will come as little comfort, given that this is more likely to reflect residual stocking levels than consumer appeal.

Exactly how the Japanese Xbox division can recover from this kind of reception is unclear. As you may know, the department was rocked by an aggressive staffing cull of late, further compounded by negative press reactions, consumer apathy and appalling sales of both hardware and software.

Other interesting news comes in the publisher breakdown for Japan. Indeed, Sony Computer Entertainment is ranked surprisingly low:

Square-Enix - 4.28 million units
Nintendo - 3.15 million units
Konami - 1.84 million units
Sega - 1.65 million units
Capcom - 1.63 million units
Namco - 1.62 million units
Koei - 1.57 million units
Pokemon - 1.44 million units
Bandai - 1.41 million units
Sony - .95 million units