Thu, Sep 24, 2020 page10

• Pandemic offers Tokyo Game Show a new life

  • AFP, TOKYO
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  Once a premier industry event, the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) has been increasingly overshadowed by global competitors in recent years, but as the COVID-19 pandemic forces it online, some see a chance for reinvention.

  The exhibition, which opened online yesterday, showcases Japanese video games and is still regularly thronged by enthusiastic gamers, attracting more than 250,000 people a year since 2013.

  However, its star has faded in the industry, with most of Japan’s top developers debuting new offerings elsewhere.

  

  A woman attends the Tokyo Game Show in Makuhari on Sept. 12 last year.

  Photo: AFP

  “TGS has been on a downward trend in the last 10 to 15 years,” said Serkan Toto, an analyst at Kantan Games in Tokyo.

  Part of that is the result of a decline in the dominance of Japanese gaming companies, Toto said.

  The exhibition began in 1996 and was an unmissable industry event in the early 2000s. But it has seen its leader position increasingly eroded by competition from E3, held in Los Angeles each June, and Gamescom, in Cologne, Germany, in August.

  With the growing importance of the US and European gaming markets, Gamescom now attracts more visitors than its rivals and is the favored place for new product reveals.

  “The weird thing about TGS is it feels like it’s getting bigger for the number of people attending every year, but breaking news and stuff, that’s on an inverse curve,” said Brian Ashcraft, who writes for specialist site Kotaku and has covered the Tokyo exhibition for 15 years.

  The event has increasingly focused on the domestic market, offering most of its content in Japanese only.

  “In the last couple of years, it has become increasingly clear that the TGS has been looking inwards rather than being an international show,” Toto said.

  Held each September before the holiday shopping season, “TGS allows visitors to try out games” that have been announced elsewhere, said Yasuyuki Yamaji, secretary-general of the Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association, which runs the TGS.

  “People also come for the atmosphere, to see e-sports competition, do cosplay [dressing up as characters] or have a fun time with their family,” Yamaji told reporters.

  The pandemic makes most of that impossible, but organizers are hoping that taking the show online might increase the audience in Japan and abroad.

  Ordinarily, “70 to 80 percent of visitors come from Tokyo and surrounding areas,” Yamaji said.

  However, online, “limitations on space, distance and time disappear,” he said.

  The schedule for this year’s show runs late into the night in Japan, offering those in faraway timezones the chance to watch e-sports battles and game demonstrations.

  Several presentations are offered in English and Chinese, along with Japanese, and some games are available for online play, although regional availability restrictions might pose challenges.

  Still, some of this year’s biggest releases are not being presented at the Tokyo Games Show.

  Microsoft Corp, which made just 0.25 percent of its Xbox One sales in Japan, is attending, but is not presenting its new console.

  Sony Corp, which unveiled its new PlayStation 5 online last week, is skipping the event altogether this year.

  Nintendo Co, whose games and Switch console dominated the Japanese market last year, has rarely had a presence.

  Organizers say this year’s event might inspire permanent format changes.

  “We would like to be able to do a hybrid physical event that retains the advantages of an online TGS, like presentations at a distance,” Yamaji said.

  Whether attracting a broader international audience would convince industry players that Tokyo is once again a place to launch new products remains to be seen, but at the very least, the pandemic is creating an opening for innovations in a format that has changed little in recent years.

  Yamaji said that half of this year’s exhibitors are non-Japanese, making for a “more global TGS.”

  “I think next year it will be interesting because it’ll be like: ‘What is really important’?” Ashcraft said.

  “What can they show digitally? What can they do in person? I think this year will give them a good barometer for that,” he said.
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