Tokyo Game Show 2024 draws in the crowds — and the key people | The DeanBeat

I made it to Japan this week for my first Tokyo Game Show. Yes, in 27 years of regular coverage of games, I have never been to the show until now. Here’s some of my impressions of the event, which should draw around 200,000 people or so — many of them cosplayers on the weekend.

An update: The organizers of TGS said preliminary numbers show that 274,739 visitors attended the event. That’s up 12.9% from 243,238 last year.

First, it is pretty massive. There are 985 companies at the show, compared to 787 in 2023. They’re occupying 3,252 booths, compared to 2,682 booths last year. There are 44 countries attending, the same as a year ago. And there are 2,850 titles on display, compared to 2,291 a year ago. On almost every measure, the numbers are up; we’ll see how final attendance looks later on.

There are some interesting figures on platforms and genres. While Nintendo is not at the show, there are 295 Nintendo Switch games, up from 234 last year. Meanwhile, Pocket Pair, the maker of Palworld, was there with a large booth and a lot of cosplayers. Nintendo sued Pocket Pair for making what everyone jokingly called “Pokemon with guns.”

There are 156 PS4 and 238 PS5 games, up from 144 and 158 a year ago. In fact, Sony was there showing off the quality of the PlayStation 5 Pro. You can see Gran Turismo running on it in this video.

Xbox has 172 X/S games, up from 103 last year, and 86 Xbox One games, up from 78. Microsoft showed off a bunch of its new games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in a special broadcast at the Tokyo Game Show.

Xbox also announced that Starcraft I and II (from the Blizzard division of the newly acquired Activision Blizzard business) will be coming to Game Pass on November 5, and players heard the Japanese voiceover in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle for the first time.

From Konami, the Xbox audience saw the latest visual update on Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater with updated graphics, and Japanese studios Denki Works and Critical Reflex debuted a world premiere with their classically inspired Tanuki Pon’s Summer and much, much more. Gilles Langourieux, CEO of Virtuos, an Asia-focused external development company with 3,800 people, noted that his team of external developers helped with the Snake Eater title for more than two years. He told me that he feels like the gaming market is getting better. (We hope so. Our theme at GamesBeat Next 2024 coming on October 28-29 in San Francisco is back to growth).

There are 625 Steam games, up from 437; 496 PC, up from 363, 188 iOS, up from 161, and 190 Android, up from 163. There are only three PSVR2 titles, down from 12 last year; 6 Valve Index, down from 19 last year; 32 Meta Quest 2, down from 27 last year; and 6 HTC Vive, down from 19 last year.

That definitely feels like VR is on the decline in terms of its share of the market, while Steam, Sony and Nintendo and even Xbox are in a very healthy state.

In terms of genres, there are 500 action games, up from 353 last year; 347 RPGs, down from 379 last year; 397 adventure games, up from 340 last year; 208 simulation games, down from 257 last year; 74 shooting games, down from 93 last year; 155 puzzle games, up from 100 last year; 96 ARPGs, up from 60 last year; 187 action adventure, up from 115 last year; 51 sports, up from 29 last year; 28 racing, down from 29 last year; and 47 action shooting, up from 44 last year.

I would note that I haven’t seen nearly as many layoffs among the Japanese or Asian game companies as I have seen in the West. Kenji Matsubara, CEO of SNK, said in an interview with me in Tokyo that the Japanese game industry may have had a more conservative approach during the pandemic, not hiring so many people as the Western companies did. As a result, they didn’t have to break with the tradition of lifetime employment and cut a lot of jobs as the post-pandemic times led to a drop in gaming demand.

A number of executives noted in interviews that the Chinese game companies have come on strong. Ken Kutaragi, father of the PlayStation, gave a keynote talk at the Tokyo Game Show where he foresaw a shift from computer entertainment (which he saw growing out of toys and then video games) to AI-infused media with supercomputing technology. He foresees an age of “real-time computing” that will be 100 times bigger than the game industry we have today. That’s very optimistic.

In the meantime, he noted the success of Chinese game company Game Science, which sold 20 million copies in its first month of sales for Black Myth Wukong. Alongside other hits like Genshin Impact, Zenless Zen Zero and Honkai Star Rail, it feels like the Chinese have come into their own.

During the week, I made visits to Sony Electronics, Sega, SNK and more. And, for the first time in Tokyo, I co-hosted a dinner party with Xsolla for Japanese game companies, making a mark for GamesBeat in Japan for the first time in eight years. In the previous trip eight years ago, Matsubara, then at Sega, was also on a panel that I moderated along with the Canadian government as they pitched Japanese devs to set up show in Canada.

That was one sign of the global movements in gaming, and we see even more of that today. SNK’s sister company, Manga Productions, acquired Toei, a maker of manga and anime shows, and it’s using that talent to train interns in Saudi Arabia. Kenji Matsubara, CEO of SNK, has expanded the company from 200 to more than 600 since Saudi Arabia’s Misk Foundation acquired it.

That enabled the company to bring back SNK’s fan favorite, Fatal Fury, for the first time in 26 years.

In fact, Mike Milanov, head of Qiddiya Gaming in Saudi Arabia, had a booth at the Tokyo Game Show with a cyberpunk theme to promote the esports and gaming district of Qiddiya, a modern city that the Saudi’s are building outside Riyadh as a “giga project.”

Qiddiya hosted a panel of Street Fighter esports stars at its booth — and it drew a massive crowd.

It’s a global gaming business. It’s good to remember that when the blues and business cycles hit any given part of the business. I’m glad to see a part of the world — long overdue for me to visit — where gaming is thriving.