If there’s one sample that was clear at this yr’s Tokyo Recreation Present, it’s that the foremost Japanese sport publishers have swung again round to console gaming in a really massive method. Whereas we’re nonetheless seeing loads of help for present free-to-play cell video games and some new ones, corporations are investing most of their assets into console gaming as soon as once more. Every firm’s strategy to that concept is a little bit totally different, and we will see that clearly by evaluating Konami and Bandai Namco’s Tokyo Recreation Present 2023 line-ups.
Bandai Namco had a really massive and spectacular sales space, with Tekken 8 serving on the foremost centerpiece. And hey, why not? It’s not yearly {that a} new mainline entry in that collection drops. The final time was Tekken 7, again in 2015. This sport clearly isn’t coming to cell or certainly something lower than high of the road consoles and computer systems. Past that, the corporate has a slate of recent entries in established franchises like Tales of and My Hero Academia plus some fully new issues like Sand Land and Synduality Echo of Ada. For cell, the corporate was solely displaying present video games like SD Gundam G Era Everlasting and The Idolmaster Shiny Colours: Music for Prism.
Konami’s sales space was much less clearly fancy than common, however that didn’t imply it got here with empty pockets. By leaps and bounds the largest supply of consideration was its upcoming launch Steel Gear Strong: Grasp Assortment Vol. 1, which brings the primary three Steel Gear Strong video games to trendy consoles together with a number of different odds and ends. The ready time to play these video games have been typically as much as three hours! I suppose the outdated franchise nonetheless has some life in it but if persons are prepared to attend that lengthy to play some remasters of remasters.
The opposite massive title Konami was displaying was the most recent entry in its fashionable Japan-only Momotaro Dentetsu collection. It’s coming to the Nintendo Change, the place the earlier entry proved to be one in all Konami’s largest console hits in years. It’s a multiplayer-focused board game-style affair, like a extra concerned and fewer torturous model of Monopoly. Bomberman and PowerPro Baseball have been there as effectively, and the latter was one in all two cell video games Konami featured on the present. The opposite? Yu-Gi-Oh, after all. Duel Hyperlinks, to be particular, which simply acquired a serious replace. Nothing to run up and down the road shouting about, in different phrases.
Whereas I’ve little doubt that each Konami and Bandai Namco could have extra cell video games sooner or later, it serves as a very good barometer for the Japanese sport trade that they each selected to make their main console model revivals the celebs of their respective cubicles. In some methods, it makes loads of sense. Are cell avid gamers actually watching the Tokyo Recreation Present? I hope they’re, or else nobody is studying these articles. However console avid gamers are positively maintaining a tally of the present, which suggests if you happen to’re going to splash out some cash to advertise issues it’d as effectively lean that method. A minimum of we’ll at all times have Yu-Gi-Oh.
