Generally speaking, Japan has always been a tough nut to crack for Western mobile game developers: In my experience of over 15 years working in this business, only China is more difficult to enter. But there is also a handful of European and American companies that are very successful in this country. Needless to say, mobile gaming is very dynamic and things change quickly, but there is the following group of studios that was able to place games in the top 100 grossing in Japan. The Top 9 Western Studios In Japan’s Mobile Gaming Market The absolute No. 1 in that list is Playrix (HQ: Ireland) w ..read more

Just like last year for 2023, game industry news site GamesIndustry.biz asked several analysts for predictions about the global gaming market in 2024. Here is a repost from my contribution to their article: “Switch 2” will come and be $400 The time is finally here for a Switch successor, even though I can say a “Pro” model actually did exist and certain developers were already working with the dev kit. I believe the next hardware will drop next year for $400. There is a high chance that games will cost more, too: $70. The next system is also likely to be an iteration rather than ..read more

Game industry data provider KADOKAWA ASCII Research Laboratories just published a new set of numbers on the state of the Japanese market. According to the company, the overall gaming market in Japan grew 1.4% year-on-year to 2.03 trillion yen in 2022 – which currently converts to US$13.9 billion (please note the Japanese yen is extremely weak at the time of writing). It is interesting that Kadokawa ASCII found the gaming market worldwide contracted by 7.0% in the same time frame to reach 26.8 trillion yen (US$183.7 billion), meaning Japan grew against the global trend. Japanese Game Marke ..read more

PC gaming has been becoming bigger and bigger in Japan in recent years, and the most recent statistics from Steam seem to support the trend. According to Steam’s own “Hardware & Software Survey”, the percentage of Japanese-speaking users reached 2.82% in June 2023. I am following these surveys for a long time, and this is a record high. Here are the top 15 languages on Steam for last month: So Japanese comes in at No. 6 – ahead of German or French. (The full ranking shows some strange results, however: Arabic is at the bottom with 0.00% – which of course cannot be and puts this language ..read more

I was recently interviewed by Joseph Kim (who runs GameMakers and is also the CEO of mobile game studio Lila Games), Brian Peganoff (founder at Timber Advisors) and Matthew Kanterman (Director Of Research at Roundhill Investments) on the Japanese gaming market – with an extra dash of Korean. Here is the video: OUTLINE: 0:00 Intro 1:25 Key Asian gaming trends, including crypto 4:45 Serkan’s take on the console wars 8:18 Matthew’s take: Mobile never killed console 9:22 Serkan: Traditional Asian game companies killing it on mobile 10:55 Live services from Asian game companies 14:20 Nintendo 25:2 ..read more

The Pokemon Company is running from one record financial year to another. Following 2022’s great numbers, the Japanese government’s official gazette shows the following numbers for the fiscal year ending on February 28 this year: Net sales: 235 billion yen (US$1.67B) + 15% on the year Operating profit: 67 billion yen (US$480M) + 13% Net profit: 49 billion yen (US350M) + 20% This was The Pokemon Company’s 25th fiscal, and these numbers are a reflection of how much bigger the brand has become over the last years. In November 2022 for example, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet for the Nintendo Switch ..read more

Japanese game industry data provider KADOKAWA ASCII Research Laboratories just published the top 10 grossing mobile games for Japan in CY2022. Here is the overview (gross sales, Japan domestic only, iOS and Android combined) – based on the company’s estimates*: 1) Monster Strike from Mixi: US$705M 2) Uma Musume Pretty Derby from Cygames: US$675M 3) Fate/Grand Order from Sony subsidiary Aniplex: US$473M 4) Puzzle & Dragons from GungHo Online: US$319M 5) Genshin Impact from HoYoverse: US$286M 6) Pro Baseball Spirits A from Konami: US$263M 7) Dragon Quest Walk fr ..read more

Foreign-made video games have always had a very hard time in Japan. For example, a Famitsu statistic summarizing the top 100 best-selling games in Japan between January 2001 and September 2013 (accumulated across these almost 13 years) does not include even a single foreign-made title. Almost 10 years have passed since the release of that data set, and the sales performance of non-Japanese video games has surely gone up generally – it’s still tough for American or European publishers, however. It’s not that Western mega hits like Call Of Duty, GTA or FIFA do not sell at all in Japan: They are ..read more

There is a long, long list of mobile game companies from the “West” (mainly North America and Europe) that tried but failed entering the Japanese market via a local subsidiary over the last 10-15 years. The list of companies that left include powerhouses such as King, Rovio, Zynga (the most unfortunate case of them all), Playtika or Playfish/EA. Again, I specifically mean a full-blown market entry here, with a Japanese office, locally hired staff etc. Chinese and Korean Game Companies Have A “Secret” Advantage In Japan What these Western studios have in common is a structural disadvantage when ..read more

While some of the big European and American game companies have expressed skepticism about Web3 gaming, scaled down ambitions or adopted a wait-and-see approach, things are very much different in Japan. (In that context, Japan is actually similar to South Korea (or Asia in general), but I will focus just on Japan here.) Last year, I published a primer on blockchain gaming in Japan, and the Web3 game industry in Japan has only grown further since – despite the crypto winter, the various scandals the (global) industry saw and the general tech downturn. Japan is the world’s third-largest game mar ..read more