Tokyo Game Show survey results: RPGs, yes; foreign games, no

TOKYO--CESA has released the results of its survey from this year's Tokyo Game Show. CESA (Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association) is the industry organization that runs the Tokyo Game Show. On the last day of this year's show, the organization surveyed over 1,000 gamers about their opinions on everything from cell phone games to favorite genres, and now the survey results are available for download at the cesa.or.jp site. The document is in Japanese, but a CESA spokesman assured GameSpot today that an English version is coming soon.

Here are some of the survey's highlights:

Unsurprisingly, PS2 led the console ownership poll: 79 percent of respondents have one. PSOne and the original PlayStation followed, with 62 percent owning one of the two machines. Nintendo captured third and fourth place with the Super NES and GBA/GBASP, which had 58 percent and 56 percent ownership respectively. Microsoft's Xbox didn't fare nearly as well, with only 10 percent of respondents stating owning one.

According to complete CESA statistics, ownership of Microsoft's game machine ranked lower than five consoles that aren't even in production. Each of the following systems are owned by a portion of respondents numbering greater than 10 percent: Super NES, GameBoy Color, N64, Dreamcast, and Saturn.

But the next question put Microsoft's situation in a more positive light: when the respondents were asked which console they would like to buy, Xbox was the second most common response at 17 percent. GameCube was the most popular response with 27 percent, with the PS2 at 13 percent.

The survey also offered insight into software preferences. The heavy preference for RPGs is eye-opening: 39 percent of respondents identified it as their favorite genre. This is far ahead of every other genre: strategy gaming, the second most popular choice, tallied only 7 percent of the votes. Meanwhile, first person shooters and LAN games received scores under 1 percent.

Figures like these make Japan's game market look like a tough nut to crack for overseas software developers. The statistics for ownership of overseas games are even more discouraging: The percentage of respondents currently own non-Japanese software? Just over 1 percent. And only 4 percent expressed interest in buying such software in the future.

Could these results really be representative of the Japanese game market as a whole? GameSpot contacted CESA to ask this question. The response? "Not necessarily." Apparently TGS attendees tend to be hard-core gamers, and their responses can be different from surveys taken with a larger, more diverse set of respondents. The spokesman pointed out that CESA's "2004 Games White Paper," due in the summer of 2004, will include data from surveys of a broader population. The spokesperson said he expected to see significant differences between the upcoming results and the data collected at the Tokyo Game Show.