Julia Stoll
Research expert covering TV and video media
Console gaming in Japan - statistics & facts
To many people across the world, Japan is almost synonymous with gaming culture: Japanese companies have played an important role in shaping the global video game industry at least since the 1980s, when the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) helped to revive an ailing U.S. gaming market. In 1989, the introduction of the Game Boy revolutionized the handheld sector. Since then, many franchises and characters, such as Super Mario, Sonic, and Pok茅mon, have attained worldwide recognition and popularity. Within Japan, the console video game market, which in this case consists of hardware and packaged software sales, was estimated at 377.4 billion Japanese yen in 2022. The total value of the domestic gaming market is much higher, however, as mobile games account for most of the revenue in Japan today.
