I wonder how much Steams efforts played into this. The Steam Deck launch in Japan was a big deal (at least for me), but didn’t sounded like a huge success. They even got a Steam Pal mascot, because Valve thought this is a Japanese thing. This never got a global marketing thing sadly, wish Steam Pal became their mascot and dedicated game (or licensed to others)… I digress.
They also love handhelds, but unfortunately the Steam Deck is huge, it wasn’t widely available and there wasn’t a big marketing push. And now with those prices its hopeless anyway. What PC games are the most popular in Japan? Steam has https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topsellers/JP/ listing, but that doesn’t show the non Steam games (obviously).
Perhaps consumers there are also tired of paying increasingly high prices for hardware only to be locked into an ecosystem where games not only cost more on average (with sales not being as frequent as on PC), but also go away sometime after the manufacturer moves on to their next console.
I also wonder if the advent of small form factor machines like the various decks, steam machine, more availability mini-ITX boards also served to fuel this uptick.
The Japanese love small multi use gadgets. If they can have a gaming console, editing software, an email machine, and a video player in a small form factor that fits neatly in their tiny apartment then they’d go for it. I think the premium for space and respect for their own property is why so many legacy games and consoles are still so easy to find and purchase in second hand stores over there.
I can’t find the make or model, but I remember watching a video about how a Japanese company produced a high end digital camera but in a tiny frame. The camera met terrible reviews outside of Japan because the small form factor caused issues with overheating and short battery life. It became the #1 camera sold in Japan for years because Japanese people cared more about the size than anything else.
IKEA also initially had terrible sales when they opened their first stores in Japan because their furniture only had a single use. They had to update their designs to be multi-use.
Watch out Sony. Wonder if Nintendo will see their sales affected by PC one day?
No worries, they taking proactive steps in suing every emulator creator left and right.
I’m sure that will work out in their favor haha
Steam’s top games of the year in Japan, in contrast to consoles where Nintendo’s Switch and Switch 2 exclusives dominate, are driven by global free-to-play titles, with Counter-Strike 2, PUBG: Battlegrounds, and Apex Legends being the three biggest games in terms of revenue. Of the top twelve titles, only Monster Hunter Wilds from Capcom was developed by a Japanese company, with hits like ARC Raiders and Call of Duty also making the list. In terms of playtime, Left 4 Dead 2 was top, followed by Terraria, with DOTA 2 and Stardew Valley also making the list.
Yes, Player Unknown’s Battle Grounds: Battlegrounds.
This is the story here, and it’s a parallel to the mobile use case: F2P software on a multi-use device. There’s long-term growth potential here as local LLM use becomes more commonplace, which will hit PCs before mobile devices. Inference and video games use the same hardware.
What’s interesting is this is not entirely dissimilar to why PlayStation hit it big. So many people bought PS2s for the DVD player and ended up folded into the PS ecosystem. Sony’s going to have to improve their value proposition or they are going to continually lose their third-party cut to Steam. Not going in the right direction with that lately.
I don’t blame them when Playstation and Nintendo got greedy.
“Got” greedy?
Over 200 Percent In Four Years
Such a strange metric. No graphs either
1 person in Japan playing on PC.
4 years later
3 people in Japan playing on PC.
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