| Article Index |
|---|
| Tokyo Game Show 2009 and the State of the Japanese Gaming Industry |
| Editorial (Cont.) |
| All Pages |
We here at Pixelnauts don't exactly have the funding necessary to send a team of editors out gallivanting across the Pacific to cover the Tokyo Game Show. As such, we have to make due with getting our news from the same sources that you do: giant gaming news sites.
So after a week of perusing these various gaming hovels in search for an enticing nugget of info, I finally made an interesting discovery (or should I say, non-discovery): there were no interesting nuggets that came out of Tokyo this year at all.
The Tokyo Game Show has been the barometer by which the thriving Japanese gaming culture is measured, as well as the venue from which some of gaming's more memorable and significant announcements have been made, yet TGS 2009 seemed like a shadow of its former self.
So now that the dust has settled, everyone seems to be asking if this poor showing is indicative of the current weakened state of the Japanese gaming industry in general. The father of Mega Man, Keiji Inafune seems to think it is.
In perhaps the most newsworthy piece of information to come out of the week, Inafune stated at a hands-on event for his upcoming Canadian developed Dead Rising 2 that he thinks Japan developed titles are already irrelevant. "Personally when I [look] around at all the different games at the TGS floor, I say 'Man, Japan is over. We're done. Our game industry is finished.'"
The sentiment seems to be gaining a lot of traction lately among gamers, developers, and publishers alike. Major Japanese publishers like Capcom, Square-Enix, and Konami have all recently expressed a need to shift to a more western focus -- a strategy apparent in a lot of their recent moves: Square-Enix's purchase of Eidos, Capcom teaming up with Valve Corporation to release their content through Steam etc.
It's a far cry from the country that genuinely made gaming everything it is today. But dropping attendance figures as well as a lower publisher presence at TGS this year reveals that Japan is now struggling to find its place within an industry that is increasingly moving westward.