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Xbox One launches in Japan 4th September

Will it suffer the same fate as its predecessors?

Xbox One launches in Japan on 4th September, Microsoft has announced.

According to Famitsu (translated by Gematsu), Xbox One games set to launch in Japan include Forza 5, Kinect Sports Rivals, Sunset Overdrive, Halo on Xbox One, Dead Rising 3 and Ryse: Son of Rome.

A raft of Japanese companies are making games for the system, including Arc System Works, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Cave, CyberConnect2, From Software, Konami, Level 5 and Sega.

Square Enix will publish Call of Duty: Ghosts, Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, Thief and Murdered: Soul Suspect as Xbox One launch titles.

The release of Xbox One in Japan comes nearly a year after the console launched in North America and the UK. The PlayStation 4 went on sale there in February.

Xbox has struggled in Japan, with sales of both the original Xbox and the Xbox 360 lagging far behind their competitors there.

Eurogamer investigated the console's struggle in an investigation titled Why Xbox failed in Japan, published in 2012.

Will Xbox One suffer the same fate as its predecessors? Speaking to Eurogamer last year, Xbox boss Phil Spencer insisted Japan remained an important market for Microsoft's console.

"The Japanese development community remains incredibly important to us, and we're continuing to invest there," Spencer said.

"We're having great conversations with people. We're not announcing anything, but I can say both RPGs and specifically the Japanese developers are really important to our ecosystem."

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