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...
GLOBAL GAME BUSINESS TRENDS IN 2024 (PREDICTION)
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...
Japan’s Gaming Market Slightly Grew in 2022 – Against The Global Trend
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...
Japanese Steam User Number Reaches Record High
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...
JAPAN GAMING MARKET INTERVIEW
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...
The Pokemon Company Reports Yet Another Record Financial Year
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...