Photographs by Daniel Boczarski.
The 20th annual Tokyo Game Show concluded this past weekend, and took over the Makuhari Messe convention hall in Chiba, Japan. Attendance increased at the show this year, with the total count coming in at 271, 224 — and the huge crowds are due to the fact that two of the four days of the show are open to the public. This year a record 614 exhibitors from 37 countries were on hand to show off the latest in console, mobile and PC games, as well as plenty of VR experiences which were to be found wherever you may have roamed across the huge hall.
From the major exhibitors, Sony had quite a lot show off, coming fresh off of revealing the PS4 Pro a few weeks prior. With a lot of potential for new releases taking advantage of the new specs, there was certainly excitement for the company’s upcoming titles on display, which included Hot Shots Golf, Gran Turismo Sport, and various of the company’s upcoming PS VR titles including Summer Lesson.
Final Fantasy XV had a strong showing as well, and given that fans have been clamoring for a new entry into the series for a long time. The Square Enix booth had plenty of booths set up running a TGS-exclusive demo which held attendees’ interests all throughout the show. This may have been the highlight of the show in fact, as overall the year did not have much top-tier games that would have been in competition with Final Fantasy.
During the event, exhibitors will often hold stage shows at their booths during which they will bring out creators or producers to discuss about the game. One of these was Konami, which held a reveal of Metal Gear Survive footage, and the gameplay strays so far from the Metal Gear formula that one has to wonder if it was even worth keeping the brand name on it.
Sega also had a strong showing with both Persona 5 and Yakuza 6 being playable on the show floor. While very different, both games look very impressive visually, with Yakuza 6 having the edge given that it’s a bit more of a realistic visual style. Both booths were packed with visitors throughout the days eager to get their hands on the titles.
VR experiences ranged from from odd but expected for the show bath anime girl simulator, where attendees sat in an inflatable pool to simulate the effect, to 4K VR footage following schoolgirls around a gymnasium, to more normal showings like PlayStation VR’s DriveClub VR, Farpoint, as well as the VR Worlds demo compilation which will be packaged in with the headset. On display was also Rez VR along with the Synesthesia Suit, which provides full-body haptic to feedback to correspond to the game.
All in all, the 20th installment of the Tokyo Game Show seemed a bit underwhelming; not by fault of the show of course, but by the state of the industry which seems to be a bit stagnant currently. Perhaps with VR taking off we will see a bit more interesting developments, but it would also be nice to see a resurgence of high-quality console titles, which seemed to be a bit lacking this year.
