Just a fun little story that captured a few headlines for a short period of time. For a brand new console that hit Japan, it's amazing to think just a short while later the now obsolete Dreamcast would be shifting more of it's left over stock than Microsoft's newest console...
Take your mind back to the beginning of 2002. In Japan, the PS2 had been out for 2 years at this point, the Dreamcast had been discontinued over a year ago and the GameCube launched at just before the end of 2001. The only 6th generation console yet to hit Japan's shores was the original Xbox - a console which hit US territories at the end of 2001.
The Japanese market didn't have to wait long for the Xbox as it released on the 22nd February that year at ¥34,800. Microsoft didn't see the greatest results in the Japanese market despite their best efforts to garner Japanese audiences with some excellent home-made titles. Still, the console was doing okay, but it was easily the least performant out of the new consoles. According to Famitsu sales data, the Xbox sold 472,992 with the best selling title for the machine not even reaching 1/4 million sales (Dead or Alive 3, 217,149).
But it wasn't until the first week of April 2002 which showed how terrible the original Xbox was performing in Japan. Whilst the Dreamcast had been discontinued nearly a year and a half ago vs Microsoft's new console only being 2 months old, Sega's ageing console resurfaced in news headlines at it had miraculously outsold Microsoft's latest machine.
Sega Dreamcast sold 3,427 units against the Xbox's 2,179 units.
To put this in perspective, the Dreamcast alone only had 40,000 shipments for the entire of 2002 whilst Xbox had 327.699 - 160,000 of those coming off the first 2 weeks of it being on sale.
This was the first time Xbox was in the spotlight for it's embarrassing performance in Japan that it was being outsold by a zombie console. Sales data for Dreamcast in 2002 is a bit patchy. Famitsu sales data ends in February 2002 whilst Media Create still recorded sales but unfortunately isn't well archived. Looking at sporadic reports, we can see by the 21st May, the Dreamcast sold a measly 160 units. It's safe to say that this was likely the first and last time Dreamcast had any opportunity off outselling any console again.
So this was just a fun little footnote in history, the last bastion of Sega's console somehow fending off Microsoft's newest machine despite long since being manufactured. Was this just a sign of how well the Dreamcast was still selling, how poorly the Xbox was selling or both? We'll leave that one with you....
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/22724-dreamcast-outsells-xbox-in-japan/
https://sites.google.com/site/gamedatalibrary/hardware-totals
https://web.archive.org/web/20050221025401/http://www.casbox.com/Stinger/Sting58.html
https://www.resetera.com/threads/xbox-console-game-lifetime-sales-charts-in-japan-from-famitsu.558559/
https://www.gamecubicle.com/stat-japan-sales-2002-june_3.htm
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