Back in September, I took a vacation to Japan and coincidentally Tokyo Game Show happened to be the same week. I had just been to my first ever videogame convention, Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, but TGS is obviously an entirely different entity. Here are my quick impressions — and photos!
Tokyo Game Show, if you haven’t been, is more of a trade show for publishers and retailers. I enjoyed it, but there were only a small amount of companies showing, mainly the big Japanese companies and Microsoft. I missed the absence of independent publishers. TGS is more commercialized, whereas PAX is more fan-based and has more interaction with the attendees. At TGS they made a strong effort to control information and pictures taken — even as press, I was required to personally introduce myself to each publisher’s overseas representative and give my name card before they would explain what I could or could not shoot.
Tokyo Game Show also does not particularly cater to foreign attendees, so if you are going to attend in the future make sure you either have a pretty good grasp of the Japanese language, or go with a Japanese friend who can translate for you; otherwise you won’t understand everything and you’ll miss out on a lot. I’m sure some of you reading this are thinking “Duh, you’re in Japan” but you would think with Microsoft having a strong representation and TGS having a reputation as a huge show that there would be more effort in this area.
Internet hype paints Tokyo Game Show as a “can’t-miss” event, which may have given me unrealistic expectations going in. Even so, I did enjoy seeing the trailers of games I’m interested in, including many which may not see the light of day outside of Japan. I’m glad I got the chance to attend TGS for myself, hopefully next year will be better. And for those of you who couldn’t make it this year, here are all the photos I manged to take before they chased me away:
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