The staggering US$2.5 billion that Microsoft Corp has just shelled out for the game Minecraft and its quirky graphics will be foremost in developers’ minds at the Tokyo Game Show this week, where simple yet immersive games are expected to figure heavily.
Asia’s largest digital entertainment exhibition, which begins today in the vast hangar-like buildings of Makuhari just outside Tokyo, will have a whole section for gaming with a social side.
It is already big business — games played online or accessed through sites such as Facebook are hot on the heels of traditional consoles and are set, by some estimates, to overtake them in terms of revenue in the not-too-distant future.
“Nowadays most games have some social features included in them, which has led to an increase in the number of end-users,” market research firm Reportlinker said.
The research company dates the take-off of social gaming to the success of Farmville, a simulation game hosted initially by Facebook in 2009 in which users build farms with their friends.
The global video game industry was worth ¥6.3 trillion (US$59 billion) last year. Seventy percent of that was through downloads via console, PC or smartphone, according to Japanese game specialists Enterbrain.
“Games have moved from the console package to the data packet,” Enterbrain said.
This trend is set to grow in the future — analysts at technology research company TechNavio forecast that the global social gaming market will grow an average of 18 percent every year until 2018.
In Japan, popular entertainment platforms Gree and DeNa/Mobage owe their success to social gaming, which they developed widely on Japanese flip-phones before smartphones came on the scene.
Online messaging app Line, launched in 2011 as a communication service to rival US-based Skype and WhatsApp, has also branched out into games, whilst Japanese Facebook precursor Mixi relies on its socially connected electronic diversions to survive.
Each of these “big four” companies on the Japanese gaming scene boasts between 25 million and 40 million users in Japan.
“The defining feature of social gaming in Japan is that it is scattered disparately between several hundred different developers” who contribute to these platforms, said Serkan Toto, a specialist on the Japanese game market.
Gamers are expected to flock to the four-day Tokyo Game Show to try the latest offerings in long-running sagas created for the Sony PS4, the Microsoft Xbox One or the Nintendo Wii U.
Pocket consoles such as the PS Vita or the Nintendo 3DS will also be represented at the event, where more than 400 exhibitors are to display their wares.
Separately, Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) yesterday launched an entry-level gaming desktop computer in Taiwan to expand its offering of products and attract more core gamers.
Kevin Lin (林福能), general manager of sales at Asustek, said that gaming desktop PCs currently account for about 10 percent of the company’s desktop PC shipments in Taiwan.
He expected the figure to exceed 30 percent by the end of the year in the local market. Pricing for the Asustek G20 is to start from NT$34,900 (US$1,159).
Additional reporting by CNA
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