An examination of the 2024 setup for major Japanese game publishers: macro conditions, major upcoming releases, new hardware on the horizon, and more.
In our recent 2024 predictions, I shared my belief that Japanese game publishers are poised to have a strong calendar year ahead. Specifically, I believe that will manifest in robust revenue growth relative to non-Japanese peers.
Let’s first examine the recent state of the Japanese games industry. When considering the public markets, we see that most (though not all) major Japanese gaming companies had a solid 2023.
Interestingly, the Japanese stock market as a whole was up 28% for the year, its fastest expansion in a decade, meaning that most companies actually underperformed. Nevertheless, Goldman Sachs predicts a “transformational year” ahead, forecasting a rise of 13% in the TOPIX (an index of Japanese stocks that includes Nintendo, Bandai Namco, and Sony, among others) by the end of 2024.
Japan is the third-largest video game market (after the United States and China), and has traditionally been…
