After participating in nearly all of the biggest global gaming shows, the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) was the only one missing from the list.
With it being TGS’s 20th anniversary, and promising to be bigger and better than any of their shows before, we knew we had to attend.
The show ran from the 15th — 18th of September, with the first two days being B2B and the last two being B2C — with an estimated 400,000 people attending!
A record 614 companies exhibited, including the big global player — Sony, Sega, Konami, Capcom, Bandai Namco, 6Waves, and Square Enix.
The venue was an enormous convention centre in Chiba, on the outskirts of Tokyo. It was split into over 10 different sections including, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Indie Games, Business Solutions, and Business Matching System areas.
Sony, not surprisingly, had a huge presence and showed off their new Playstation VR, which was extremely impressive!
Another of the big attractions was Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XV. They set up lots of games for visitors to play and had fans queueing for hours, just to get a chance to test them. CAPCOM also had an impressive booth and showed their new Resident Evil game and movie collections.
During the event, we met with many of the world’s leading mobile gaming app publishers, to discuss how we can help them acquire more users around the world.
User acquisition costs have been steadily rising, so now, its more important than ever, to find new ways of acquiring high-quality users, at low effective cost per installs (CPI). As you can tell from the pictures, having scantily-clad girls promoting your game is definitely one the strategies they’re using!
We also held meetings with numerous gaming studios, who were showcasing their games to find publishing partners. We explained how our services can help them ‘soft launch’ into new countries, test different markets, and gain valuable user metrics — needed to sell their game, raise investment, or find publishing deals.
Japan is one of our biggest markets as the mobile gaming industry is enormous. You only have to spend a few minutes walking around the streets to understand why, as everyone you see is on their phones playing a game.
The train system in Tokyo is a unique experience, too. Compared to the ‘Underground’ in London or the ‘MTR’ in Hong Kong, there’s no noise from the passengers. Everyone is dead silent, just looking down at their phones, playing one of the latest gaming apps.
Our exhibition booth was packed with mobile gaming companies, from not only Japan, but from Europe, China, and South America, too, all wanting to explore how we could work together. Luckily, we have an international team, otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to cope with the language barriers!
