The gaming industry hosts a few markets that thrive: The Americas, Europe, and finally, Japan. The third of those also have many studios, such as Nintendo and Capcom. However, PC and mobile games markets especially, are also very powerful in the gaming industry. According to KADOKAWA ASCII Research Laboratories, Japan’s market for these has doubled in the past three years.
That said, various factors contribute to this growth, as pointed out by KADOKAWA. They’ve noted that the industry’s value as of last year was close to 2 trillion yen (or $13.7 billion in USD). Compared to 2011 and it’s $5.4 billion value, the market size has almost tripled, even. An interesting note is the PC market’s place in the equation.
KADOKAWA also comments on this, mentioning that 16 million players were on PC as of 2021, of the 55.4 million total. Compared to 2015, they spotted only 11 million, touting a 45% growth rate over the six-year period. In 2018, the PC market was half as big as it is now, and now, of the 16 million PC players, about 4.5 million use PC exclusively (doubling itself from 2015).
Serkantoto did note that the PC gaming market’s big boom in the past few years has to do with various other factors, including COVID-19 keeping everyone inside, for example. Others include a lack of PS5 availability in the region, PC game availability (like PUBG coming to Steam’s Japan stores last year after leaving DMM), and home-grown PC-first games like Final Fantasy XIV Online, just to name a few.
It’s hard to talk about financial gain without passively mentioning the blockchain in some way, though. Japan has, according to Serkantoto, a “healthy community of blockchain enthusiasts”, which includes Square Enix. Something else of note is that Square isn’t the only one that got into the blockchain; others, like Konami, have too.
Overall, the market’s gains, despite how they got there, implies a far greater ease of entering the Japanese market than it has been years ago.
