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It is no secret that the Japanese player base of Xbox games has been plummeting in Japan, but it may be worse than players thought as a game that hasn’t even been released yet has made its way to the most played games list on the Japanese Xbox storefront.
As discovered by journalist James Galizio and posted on the social media platform Twitter, the upcoming Atlus JRPG Metaphor ReFantazio has appeared on the most-played games section of the Japanese Xbox storefront. Surrounded by games like Tekken 8 and Battlefield 2042.
The ever-declining sales of Microsoft’s consoles in Japan has been a widely reported problem, as reported by Statista, the sales of the Series S|X in February of 2024 have declined to the point where even Nintendo’s discontinued 2DS line of consoles have been able to outsell Microsoft’s current line.
While the most played storefront page doesn’t give us exact numbers of who is playing games on Xbox, it does look pretty dire for a game that isn’t expected to release until Fall to be on the page. That would imply that all it took for the game to appear there were the few QA testers who would have been playing the game for work.
There is also the possibility that the title was accidentally put on the most played page through employee error. However, even if this was the case, it is still an extremely bad look for the company as a whole which has been struggling in the international market lately.
For now, gamers can only sit back and watch as the situation unfolds. Xbox’s future in Japan is very uncertain and some major changes will be needed if Microsoft wants to succeed in that market.
Metaphor ReFantazio is expected to release in late 2024 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, and on PC via Steam. Pre-orders are not yet available on any platform.
