Nintendo wins on mindshare despite traditional absence from TGS
Tokyo Game Show TGS2005: Battle of the console and handheld platforms, while native mobile game applis on the path to disrupt
by Gerhard Fasol
Here some highlights of this year’s Tokyo Game Show TGS2005:
SONY vs Microsoft.
At last year’s TGS2004 Microsoft’s XBOX exhibit was pretty low-key in a secondary hall. This year, at Tokyo Game Show TGS2005, Microsoft moved with a much bigger exhibit up into the prime position of the main hall right next to (current) market leader SONY Computer Entertainment (SCE)… While in 2004 and before, SCE was the uncontested leader of the market, Microsoft is not accelerating efforts with XBOX-360. While SONY’s PSP is fantastic, it’s being outsold in Japan by Nintendo’s DS…
Japan game market report (398 pages, pdf-file):
XBox as a broadband home entertainment machine:
wLAN hotspot for PSP (SONY PlayStation Portable) for game sharing and
download. However, with a little bit of software, PSPs could be used to hold VOIP telephone
calls via these (or other) wLAN hotspots:
Japan’s game industry consolidates
This year is the first appearance of merged BandaiNamco, which used to be separate companies until recently:
The following figure summarizes some of the recent mergers in Japan’s game software industry:
SONY staff greeting customers at the end of the first day of the show
(while greeting customers there were facing Microsoft’s impressive Xbox360 exhibition area…):
For a summary, see: Japan game market report (398 pages, pdf-file):
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