Why has game-crazy Japan not taken to e-Sports?

World
Europe

Japan is famous for its flourishing gaming industry. It is home to video game giants like Nintendo, Sony and Bandai Namco, a huge population of game fans as well as individual star players. But its e-Sports game market is still underdeveloped, partially due to the lack of marketing strategy.

Japanese have been rather slow in picking up on e-Sports. According to analysts, online gaming has tended to be seen merely as a pastime. Besides, Japanese software makers were slow to embrace multi-player gaming partly because they had success with local audiences who preferred playing alone.

The E-Sports Café in Shinjuku, Tokyo was busy on CGTN’s visit, but staff were keen to put things into context. “As you can see, we have a full house here. Japanese online game users have increased in the past year or so, but they are still far less compared to international standards,” said Masatoshi Kawai, manager of E-Sports Café.

September 21, 2017: Visitors play games during the Tokyo Game Show 2017 in Chiba, Japan. /VCG Photo

Worldwide revenue from e-Sports, including ticket sales, advertising, broadcast rights and merchandising, will reach five billion US dollars annually by 2020, according to market researcher Activate. And game-market researcher Newzoo predicted that the number of e-Sports fans worldwide will top 500 million by the same date.

Backed by a growing overseas e-Sports market, interest from Japanese gamers and corporations has picked up. However, once games started to morph into a spectator sport, Japan’s legal hurdles, which prevented large-scale competitions or high prize money, made it harder for the industry to catch up. In these conditions, there was little corporate profit to be had.

But with recent changes, such as the issuing of professional licenses and the establishment of an e-Sports union, Masatoshi said there is a lot of market potential, and many companies are eyeing investments from live broadcasts, to AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) applications.

Once a proper platform is established, this industry has the potential to become a valuable market in a short time.