On September 29, 2026, Terraria for Xbox One finally went on sale in Japan. This complete edition includes 15 years’ worth of updates and comes with official Japanese-language support. While Japanese versions had long been available on PC, Switch, and mobile, the Xbox version remained unreleased in Japan for years. Discussion threads debated why the Xbox version alone was left behind, touching on how Spike Chunsoft (the company holding Japanese distribution rights) had localized the PS3 version through its own workaround, and splitting over whether this was a genuine contractual “exclusive” or simply a business decision.
Enjoy the “complete edition,” packed with 15 years of updates! ⛏
Still, that took forever.
Back in the day this game's code made Japanese localization a massive pain to implement.
So I get why Spike Chunsoft struggled with it.
Sounds like they've since rebuilt it to make localization easier, and the original devs finally got official Japanese support working.
Nothing shady about it, Spike Chunsoft just backed out because they didn't think it'd sell.
Mystara's actually sold on Steam. Just region-locked for Japan though ("omakuni" — lit. 'not for your country').
What's BG3? Baldur's Gate? Just buy it on Steam. Why the hell would you want it on Xbox (lit. 'crappy box')?
There's precedent for this.
Take Metal Gear Rising — its Japanese release got cancelled right before the Xbox 360 launch, and sites like Hachima (a gaming blog) piled on saying 'it's because it won't sell in Japan!' But it later came out that it was actually a Japan-only PlayStation exclusivity deal, which got exposed by the fact that even the Steam version is still region-locked in Japan to this day.
The reason these domestic exclusivity deals never get made public is that they'd flat-out violate antitrust law.
Re: #24
Well yeah, because it's specifically a Japan-only block.
It hasn't been 'exposed,' because it's not true. I'll go ahead and report this.
A few years back when Rising got a GOG release, it also mysteriously got region-locked for Japan afterward and became a whole talking point.
But updates were noticeably delayed partly because of their own custom item additions, and honestly that part's hard to defend lol.
Re: #20
Spike Chunsoft held the sales rights in Japan, so it never came to Xbox there (though you could still buy it from overseas stores, which fall under 505 Games' territory). Japanese support was added to the Xbox version maybe 1-2 years ago, and now, finally, it's gone on sale on the Japanese Xbox store today.
and Xbox was the one that didn't have it?
Overseas it was out since the 360, but domestically Spike Chunsoft got the rights and, out of loyalty (to Sony), shut out PC and Xbox — the Japanese version ended up as a PS3 exclusive.
Huh? Wasn't it out on mobile and Switch?
Back then there was no mobile version, and Switch didn't even exist yet, so those would've been outside the scope of the contract.
It wasn't about loyalty — they localized it into Japanese through a hack-job workaround.
You clearly don't know why Japanese localization was so difficult on PC back then.
That still doesn't explain why they didn't release the 360 version.
'A lot' is an understatement.
Per year, roughly:
Steam: 12,000 titles
Switch: 4,000 titles
PS5: 2,000 titles
Xbox: 1,000 titles
That's just how it is.
Honestly, anyone who wanted the Xbox version already bought it from an overseas store.
I'm one of those people too.
The Xbox 360 version probably just didn't look like it would sell.
Maybe that argument works for the One, but not for the 360 back then, lol.
Then it's not an exclusive at all — sounds like it was just low priority.
Exactly right.
The fact that it released normally on platforms that didn't even exist at the time the contract was signed suggests this wasn't platform exclusivity at all, but rather an exclusion clause naming specific platforms — what people call 'block rights.'
Was it really that big a title at the time?
There was no contract or anything.
Spike Chunsoft simply didn't release it on Xbox because they figured it wouldn't sell.
The official build didn't have the capacity to support Japanese (multi-byte characters).
Once they overhauled the engine and the official version could handle Japanese, a Japanese Xbox version became possible too. That's the whole story.
Just like Re: #34 says — it was treated as a rival to Minecraft after Minecraft got ported to Xbox, and Sony pushed it hard as a near-first-party title and sponsor.
Paying money just to keep blocking the Xbox version — which barely sells anyway — makes no logical sense.
And 'there was no Switch back then!' is a dumb argument — that's just not how exclusivity deals work.
The Xbox One didn't exist back then either, though 😅
That argument's a stretch.
The PS4/One versions came out 10 months after the PS3/360 versions (already scheduled for release), whereas Switch came out years and years later — so there's nothing strange about that timeline.
Well, that's probably also why so many recent Japanese games are Steam/Switch-only these days.
Re: #73
It always comes down to this.
No contracts involved — Xbox just got left out because it doesn't sell.
Now it's PlayStation's turn to get the same treatment.
From a console-war ("geha") standpoint, that's just fine, isn't it?
The conspiracy theories from Xbox loyalists are exhausting.
Apparently 'it doesn't sell' is the go-to reason whenever something skips PlayStation and Xbox.
5plus didn't sell all that well on Vita, but once it got ported to Switch and PC — platforms with plenty of spec headroom — it took off. So they got motivated, made 6, and supplied it to the platforms that were actually selling well. Series sales record updated. Guess they don't need PlayStation.
That's really all there is to it.
Background and Key Points of Debate
Terraria launched in 2011 as a sandbox game. At the time, the Xbox 360 version had trouble supporting multi-byte characters (i.e., Japanese) due to character-encoding limitations, so in Japan, Spike Chunsoft (often shortened to “SupaChun”) localized only the PS3 version through its own custom workaround. Afterward, the PC, Switch, and mobile versions each received official Japanese localization, but the Xbox version’s engine remained unsupported for multiple languages for years. This time, an engine overhaul finally enabled official Japanese support, and with the publisher shifting to 505 Games Japan, the release has now happened. Thread posters split between two theories: that Sony paid to secretly block the Xbox release, versus that Xbox was simply deprioritized because it doesn’t sell well in Japan — neither backed by conclusive evidence. Similar past cases, such as the cancelled Japanese release of Metal Gear Rising, were brought up for comparison, but whether an exclusivity clause actually existed is something only the parties involved would know, and it’s worth noting this cannot be stated as confirmed fact.
*This article is compiled by excerpting and summarizing the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [Console Wars]) board thread “Xbox Version of Terraria Finally Gets a Japanese Release — 15 Years of ‘Block Rights’ Come to an End.”
