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I made it to Japan this week for my first Tokyo Game Show. Yes, in 27 years of regular coverage of games, I have never been to the show until now. Here’s some of my impressions of the event, which should draw around 200,000 people or so — many of them cosplayers on the weekend.
First, it is pretty massive. There are 985 companies at the show, compared to 787 in 2023. They’re occupying 3,252 booths, compared to 2,682 booths last year. There are 44 countries attending, the same as a year ago. And there are 2,850 titles on display, compared to 2,291 a year ago. On almost every measure, the numbers are up; we’ll see how final attendance looks later on.
Palworld booth at Tokyo Game Show 2024.
There are some interesting figures on platforms and genres. While Nintendo is not at the show, there are 295 Nintendo Switch games, up from 234 last year. Meanwhile, Pocket Pair, the maker of Palworld, was there with a large booth and a lot of cosplayers. Nintendo sued Pocket Pair for making what everyone jokingly called “Pokemon with guns.”
Palworld’s booth worker.
There are 156 PS4 and 238 PS5 games, up from 144 and 158 a year ago. In fact, Sony was there showing off the quality of the PlayStation 5 Pro. You can see Gran Turismo running on it in this video.
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GamesBeat Next is almost here! GB Next is the premier event for product leaders and leadership in the gaming industry. Coming up October 28th and 29th, join fellow leaders and amazing speakers like Matthew Bromberg (CEO Unity), Amy Hennig (Co-President of New Media Skydance Games), Laura Naviaux Sturr (GM Operations Amazon Games), Amir Satvat (Business Development Director Tencent), and so many others. See the full speaker list and register here.
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Xbox has 172 X/S games, up from 103 last year, and 86 Xbox One games, up from 78. Microsoft showed off a bunch of its new games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in a special broadcast at the Tokyo Game Show.
Xbox also announced that Starcraft I and II (from the Blizzard division of the newly acquired Activision Blizzard business) will be coming to Game Pass on November 5, and players heard the Japanese voiceover in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle for the first time.
From Konami, the Xbox audience saw the latest visual update on Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater with updated graphics, and Japanese studios Denki Works and Critical Reflex debuted a world premiere with their classically inspired Tanuki Pon’s Summer and much, much more. Gilles Langourieux, CEO of Virtuos, an Asia-focused external development company with 3,800 people, noted that his team of external developers helped with the Snake Eater title for more than two years. He told me that he feels like the gaming market is getting better. (We hope so. Our theme at GamesBeat Next 2024 coming on October 28-29 in San Francisco is back to growth).
Virtuos CEO Gilles Langourieux at TGS 2024.
There are 625 Steam games, up from 437; 496 PC, up from 363, 188 iOS, up from 161, and 190 Android, up from 163. There are only three PSVR2 titles, down from 12 …