TGS 08: Public attendance up, business visitors way down

by Alexander Sliwinski { Oct 13th 2008 at 4:00PM }

Tokyo Game Show organizer CESA announced (via IGN) that the show had 194,288 visitors this year, up about a thousand attendees from last year. The increase in visitors on the public days made up for the significant drop during the two "business only" days of the show.

Thursday (Business): 27,305 ('07 - 29,783)
Friday (Business): 24,178 ('07 - 32,390)
Saturday (Public): 71,639 ('07 - 64,795)
Sunday (Public): 71,166 ('07 - 66,072)

Good thing TGS is open to the public because those figures really help distract from asking: where have all the business folks gone?

Tags: tgs-2008, tokyo-game-show

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Tez (PSN: Tezasaurus) @ Oct 13th 2008 4:04PM

They just read Joystiq.

Dirty @ Oct 13th 2008 4:04PM

TGS was pretty disappointing. Nintendo already shot their wad at their own event and Sony didn't have much new to show. Microsoft was the only one with announcement.

I was just hoping for something to be looking forward to next year around this time (other that FF and Halo Recon of course).

Chin-Poh @ Oct 13th 2008 4:10PM

The 360's announcements were pretty good. I was hoping for Team Ico to announce a game for the PS3 something like Ico or SOTC.

Esat Dedezade @ Oct 13th 2008 4:11PM

(Finish the sentence game!)Instead of attending TGS, most of the developers are...

Courtney @ Oct 13th 2008 4:19PM

...saving their money to buy the slew of holiday games being released.

Seriously, I'm not sure I would put too much emphasis on those numbers as being anything indicative of TGS itself. Given the economic crisis and the difficulties in securing short term loans, some companies may have chosen to scale back the crews they sent or just not go at all. While it is the "Tokyo" Game Show, I'm sure a significant number of European and American companies usually make the trek.

As for the increase in public attendees, it makes sense if most of the attendees are locals. Entertainment tends to do very well during troubled times as people want their minds taken off the difficulties.

heypaul @ Oct 13th 2008 5:23PM

This is likely oversimplifying the situation, but my bet is that there were far less international travelers due to Western companies cutting travel budgets in light of our current economic situation.

VicViper09 @ Oct 13th 2008 5:28PM

crankin it!

Haggard (Mr.ESC resurrected on a... thursday?!) @ Oct 13th 2008 6:12PM

..being supplied with hookers and booze by Japanese video game companies.

Esat Dedezade @ Oct 13th 2008 7:13PM

@ Haggard:

"Samuel Adams. ALWAYS a good decision"

Monkey Thing?!!? @ Oct 13th 2008 4:14PM

It is odd that the Team Ico game didn't make an appearance, as some exec of Sony's heavily hinted that it was targeted for 2009, and Sony likes to give long advance notice for their titles.

Dirty @ Oct 13th 2008 4:29PM

Seriously.

Whats the deal Mr Kahn, your icon and name change... are you trying to change who you are?

Esat Dedezade @ Oct 13th 2008 4:38PM

It's not who we are underneath, it's what we do that defines us...

Or something like that...

Dirty @ Oct 13th 2008 4:39PM

What he said.

Monkey Thing?!!? @ Oct 13th 2008 5:03PM

Name change is temporary. Generally when i shift avatar, it fits some sort of "theme"

T-Bone and Razor was my name when i switched to SWAT Kats avatar for the first time, i used Wah-hah-hah when i went to Wario, last Christmas, in honor of NiGHTS 2, i did "Christmas NiGHTS" After leaving SWAT Kats avatars behind for a few months in lieu of a Brawl theme, and in honor of my SWAT Kats full series DVD burning, i did "SWAT Kats are Back!" and this, a reference from the pilot episode of Megas XLR, in honor of my Megas XLR full series DVD burning

Name will change back soon, avatar will stay until i get bored with it.

The anti-Haggard @ Oct 13th 2008 6:14PM

Stop confusing us man!

j.howlett @ Oct 13th 2008 4:48PM

maybe since there are no major consoles being launched this time around, companies are working on putting there stuff out now or are just starting something new

VicViper09 @ Oct 13th 2008 5:30PM

awesome

carg0 @ Oct 13th 2008 6:28PM

the numbers (on the business end) are a reflection of just how weak Japan's influence on the rest of the industry has become, unfortunately.

combine this with other devs/publishers holding their own events, in the wake of E3's demise, TGS will only become more irrelevant as time passes.

aj @ Oct 14th 2008 8:38AM

I don't know, following along all the big gaming events going on it seems like there are 2 trends:

(a) There are too many gaming events, and everyone wants to save their games for their own pet project so no one event really has more than one exciting thing going one. Some have no exciting things.

(b) It seems like there just isn't anything to it. Maybe it's always like this, but all of the games coming out are really over the top and serious, all of the consoles have their fair share of problems, games really do cost a lot....for whatever reason, maybe 80$ is normal for a game at first, and in a couple of years it will be that new PS3/360 games are 40$. But it just seems too.....I don't know. Not fun enough. Not enough joy. Nothing that really makes the kid in you jump up and down.

This is my opinion, at any rate.