As reported by Automaton, Famitsu has launched a preview of its annual Famitsu Game Hakusho, a survey of the video games trade by Kadokawa ASCII Research Laboratories. One confounding takeaway from the info is that the video games market in Japan is greater than ever, with the PC house almost matching consoles for financial impression, whereas there are barely fewer players within the nation general, and plenty of hundreds of thousands fewer PC players than only a decade in the past.
Japanese video games trade by market measurement (Famitsu estimate)
- Overall market 2024: 2,396.1 billion ($16.2 billion)
- Overall market 2023: 2,317.6 billion ($15.7 billion)
- PC gaming market 2024: 265.3 billion ($1.8 billion)
Japanese gamers by population (Famitsu estimate)
- Overall 2024: 54.753 million
- Overall 2014: 48.55 million
- PC 2024: 14.52 million
- PC 2023:14.45 million
- PC 2014: 17.49 million
The market numbers correlate with those produced by investment strategy firm Epyllion earlier this year for the global games market: Strong growth for PC and mobile sales, with a slight decline for consoles. The population figure is a real headscratcher, though: Three million fewer PC gamers than reported in the 2015 Famitsu Game Hakusho.
Data agency Newzoo has likewise shown enormous growth for the PC market in Japan in recent years, while last October, Kantan reported that Japan’s Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association (CESA) shared information displaying that Japan’s PC gaming sector tripled in measurement from 2020 to 2024—that is going by software program gross sales alone, whereas the Famitsu Gaming Hakusho accounts for software program and {hardware}.
As for clarify this discrepancy, the general public preview of the 2025 Famitsu Game Hakusho has the next abstract of Japan’s general gaming progress (produced through machine translation): “Rising prices in Japan are also affecting the game market, with price increases across the market, including not only game consoles and peripherals but also subscriptions and item charges, directly leading to an expansion of the market size.”
Supporting this within the PC house, Automaton pointed to a June 2025 The Nikkei article reporting that pre-built PC costs in Japan have risen by 40% since 2019, whereas some elements—probably graphics playing cards—have “more than tripled” in worth throughout the identical interval. One potential clarification is that Japan has fewer PC players, however they’re all paying much more for the privilege.
But that does not appear to be the complete story: As PC Gamer senior editor Wes Fenlon identified, in case you had a gaming PC in 2019, you are most likely nonetheless utilizing it in 2025, and the individuals’s champion GTX 970 and 1060 graphics playing cards launched in 2015 and ’16 respectively can nonetheless run a bunch of video games in the present day.
Another issue which will assist to clarify the market/inhabitants discrepancy is the decline in reputation of low-cost and free browser video games in favor of cell gaming, however there is not arduous information accessible to again this supposition up. Whatever the case could also be, there’s cause to doubt that three million hardcore Japanese PC players beat their desktops into plowshares and left the passion behind up to now ten years.