Japanese PC gaming saw another year of explosive growth
Japanese gamers have continued to embrace the PC as a platform at staggering rates, jumping up 43% from 131.3 billion yen to 189.2 billion yen in 2022. That's a total size of about $1.3 billion US. The data comes from the latest report by Kadokawa ASCII Research Laboratories, an industry think tank which compiles yearly material about the performance of the gaming industry in Japan and abroad.
For comparison various analysts peg growth rates in the US PC Gaming market at between 1-2% in 2022, on a market of something like $9-10 billion, as growth stabilizes following a boom during the pandemic. The global gaming market as a whole actually shrunk in 2022—for the same reason.
A post-pandemic drop that, it should be noted, didn't slow down Japanese PC gaming much at all. It's another year of data proving that though conventional wisdom once said PC Gaming in Japan was niche, it ain't niche anymore. Japanese gamers are joining the rest of Asia demographically, where PC gaming is by far the largest segment of the hardcore or hobby gaming market. (Mobile gaming, of course, outstrips everything else everywhere.)
I expect the growing availability of portable PC gaming systems to further boost this growth. It's known the japanese public is very biased towards portable gaming devices, which is why the Nintendo Switch dominates by market share.
I’ve started seeing the ROG Ally and, in bigger stores both it and the Steam Deck, in electronic stores over here recently.
Think Valve only recently partnered with a distributor for East Asia, so the Steam Decks are slowly showing up in Japan and South Korea. Asus of course has a good distribution network, so generally where they're strong you'll see Allys. I still can't get a Steam Deck in a store, but can get an Ally (and probably the Legion Go).
Had my steam deck in Taiwan for quite a while but I don't know if it's on store shelves here.
I’ve seen them in Edion, an electronics chain, in Japan, and they seem to have a partnership of some kind with them - the first time you could do a hands-on anywhere in Japan was at an Edion in Osaka, and that’s where I’ve seen the physically on sale recently (as in, only in the last month or two). The only person I know with one ordered it online.
Yea, think Komodo is working with Edion for in-store sales. Saw an announcement somewhere when I was reading about Steam Deck sales in Asia (which sadly, just three countries in East Asia).