Shopping Guide
Japacon TV is a show that is on the forefront of the Japanese content industry and broadcasts at 12 p.m. every Friday on the Japanese satellite broadcast channel BS Fuji. We continue with the third part of Episode 15, “This is the Way the Game Industry Thrives,” which, similarly to the first two parts, also features the popular game maker Capcom. Let’s get to the introduction.
1983 was around the time when Nintendo had just released its family game computer and Capcom was a company that primarily made token and arcade games. After this time, Capcom began frequently creating hit games for home-use and became a leading game maker of Japan. However, even to this day, the company still puts its efforts into making arcade games and related projects, with this comprising roughly ¼ of their profits.
However, the market scale of arcades has been in a decline since 2007 and it is evident that the young generation in particular are turning away from arcade games. Due to this generation who doesn’t really play games, Capcom has begun to focus on older gamers. In truth, the amount of older gamers who go to arcades is on the rise, and this group especially likes crane games and token games. Because of this, Capcom is now involved in activities with an awareness of this demographic, such as holding game tours and detailed discussions.
On the other hand, differing vastly from this demographic, Capcom is also using approaches to target middle school students. Essentially, middle school students are the demographic who like games the most, but due to the diversification of amusements in recent years, Capcom hasn’t been able to capture the share of the market that it used to. In response to such a situation, Capcom has prepared projects unlike any they have undergone until now. If you would like to know more about these, check out the show!
This is a Tokyo Otaku Mode Original article.