WORLD
Annual Japan show for video games opens with record exhibitors, newcomers like YouTube, Amazon
Tokyo, September 18, AZERTAC
Japan's annual video game show opened Thursday with a record number of exhibitors, including independent companies and newcomers, a positive sign for an industry that has faced tough competition from games on social media and mobile devices, according to Star Tribune.
The Tokyo Game Show, which continues through Sunday, at Makuhari Messe convention center in the Tokyo suburb of Chiba, features more than 2,000 booths from 480 exhibitors.
Although Japanese game machine makers such as Sony Corp. and Nintendo Co. have been leaders in the industry for decades, the Tokyo show underlined its increasingly global makeup, with more than half of the exhibitors coming from abroad.
A special section was set up for independent game designers from Asia.
Alwyn Lee, chief executive of Daylight Studios, a small independent game company from Singapore, was showing a PC and Mac version of his game that starred potato-shaped characters.
He acknowledged the market was bigger in the U.S. than in Japan, but his company has invested in adapting the game to the Japanese language, set to launch in a couple of months here.