Why Japan Hates The Xbox And Still To This Day

Did you ever wonder why the original Xbox and the Xbox 360 never caught up in Japan?

Turns out, the Japanese had issues with the Xbox even before the original released.

Ed Fries, the former vice president of game publishing at Microsoft has revealed in his interview on Develop-Online that, …when I went to Japan to show the console, man, they really had a problem with it. I was told a number of crazy things, like the controller should weigh the same as water in your hands”, former Xbox boss Ed Fries tells Develop, describing some overseas testing prior to the original console’s launch in 2001.

“We heard all kind of negative things from Japan, like we couldn’t use the name Xbox because ‘X’ means death, and the console couldn’t be black, because that also was the colour of death. The first Xbox consoles we released in Japan weren’t black, in fact, they were a smokey colour – but I was always thinking to myself, ‘hang on, isn’t the PS2 black?!’

If the Xbox had issues from the start that would explain the lack of Microsoft’s success in Japan.

via Kotaku