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.
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.”
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