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MAGES. is running their first Xbox game sale in nearly eight years

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MAGES. has had an interesting history with Xbox consoles. Despite the platform’s troubling lack of popularity in Japan, you might be surprised to hear that they launched the original Steins;Gate visual novel for Xbox 360 and Chaos;Child for Xbox One, each as exclusive releases. These games weren’t ported to other platforms until a number of months later, meaning those rarer Xbox players had first dibs.

MAGES.’ attachment to the Xbox 360 made some level of sense. While the 360 didn’t sell quite as well as the PlayStation 3 in Japan, its 1.5 million or so users would have shown a higher attach rate toward an exclusive, especially if it gained a strong reputation—as Steins;Gate did.

But the 360’s successor, the Xbox One, faced much more dire straits. It was reported that in 2022 that the Xbox One had only sold a paltry 115,000 units in Japan—and to be clear, this was the console MAGES. had hedged all their bets on for Chaos;Child’s initial success in late 2014.

As for the more modern Xbox Series consoles… As of 2025, they’ve sold roughly 673,000 units in Japan—which actually is a decent step up from 142,000 in 2022. It’s just that, compared to the Switch’s nearly 35.5 million lifetime units sold, and the PlayStation 5’s 6.7 million, it’s pretty evident Microsoft is still failing to make waves.

So yeah, while MAGES. may have initially shown Xbox some favor, it petered out over time, perhaps in light of the Xbox One’s poor sales. MAGES.’ last major Xbox release—if you ignore Ogre Tale—was Occultic;Nine in late 2017. And although they put their digital Nintendo Switch and PlayStation libraries on sale pretty frequently, MAGES.’ last Xbox game sale was run in 2017 as well.

You would think they’ve pretty much left the platform for dead, except…

Surprise, surprise—MAGES. recently announced their first Xbox game sale in almost eight years. While Chaos;Child and PSYCHO-PASS: Mandatory Happiness did go on discount in 2017, this marks the first time Occultic;Nine and Steins;Gate 0 have gone on sale on Xbox, each at 75% off. Meanwhile, Steins;Gate and its romance spin-off, My Darling’s Embrace, are priced at an affordable 604 yen each. As of this writing, you can view all the discounts here.

It’s not so clear why MAGES. is suddenly showing the Xbox love after all this time, but as one of my fellow writers, Bassman, pointed out, MAGES. recently updated the release window for their upcoming Mystereet: Yasogami Kaoru no Chousen. It’s now expected to launch in summer, the Xbox among its expected platforms. Perhaps, ahead of this release, they’re hoping to rebuild their small yet passionate subset of devotees on the lesser-used platform.

And at the end of the day, growth is growth—673,000 Series consoles sold in 2025 isn’t so great compared to Nintendo’s multimillion-selling portable, but the Xbox is faring better than it used to in Japan; maybe they have Sony’s PlayStation price hikes to thank for that.

The one downside here is for us English speakers: None of these games are available in English on Xbox. It’s really a shame considering every one of them—minus Occultic;Nine—does have an English localization; they just never made it to Microsoft’s consoles.

Thanks, Bassman.

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