More US Congress members are accusing Sony of hurting Xbox in Japan

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One letter calls the Japanese games market "imbalanced"

Xbox Series S controller
(Image credit: Microsoft)

The US government is under increasing pressure to examine the competition between PlayStation and Xbox in Japan.

That comes from Axios, which reports that Congress members from both sides are telling the Biden administration that Sony's business practices in Japan are blocking US companies from competing in the gaming space, which could fall foul of trade deals between the two. 

"Today, we write to bring to your attention the imbalanced Japanese video game market, which we are concerned may be a result of a discriminatory trade practice that could violate the spirit of the US-Japan Digital Trade Agreement," one letter from four Republicans reads. 

The letter mentions that Sony's PlayStation has "98% of the 'high-end console market in Japan'" and that the console maker signs deals designed to keep Japanese games from Xbox, which "may violate Japan's antitrust laws". 

Now, that's not the first time we've seen the phrase "high-end console market" thrown around. Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell recently raised something similar during a hearing, referring to that same statistic to come away with a similar conclusion. 

The short of it is that America's Federal Trade Commission coined the market definition last year, which removes the Nintendo Switch from conversations around Sony and Microsoft's consoles. It's inspired a fair bit of debate as Nintendo is a major player in Japan, and removing the company from the conversation doesn't paint what many believe to be a complete picture.

Recently, Sony pointed to Starfield exclusivity as why Microsoft can't be trusted with Call of Duty.

Iain Harris
Iain Harris
News Editor, Games

I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new cloak – the more colourful, the better.