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 Market Size: Console Vs Mobile Vs PC
For Japan, Kadokawa ASCII saw the console hardware segment growing 3.4% year-on-year to 209.8 billion yen (US$1.4 billion) in 2022, and the console software segment even growing 5.9% to 389.3 billion yen (US$2.7 billion).
(It is important to note that the software estimate not only includes digital downloads of games but all online sales generated on console, i.e. micro-transactions or downloadable content.)
Smartphones remain Japan’s biggest gaming platform, with game apps reaching 1.2 trillion yen (US$8.5 billion) in market size in 2022 – down 4.4% on the year.
And finally, there is the Japanese PC gaming market, which has been expanding quickly in recent years.
For that segment, Kadokawa ASCII reports another significant jump year-on-year, up a whopping 43% from 131.3 billion yen (US$0.9 billion) to 189.2 billion yen (US$1.3 billion) in 2022.
