The scale of Tokyo Game Show continues to blow me away. Moving through crowds of fanboys at the old E3 was a stroll through the park compared to getting from place to place in the Makuhari Messe. And somehow it keeps getting bigger and bigger, especially as gaming begins to enjoy what is practically a renaissance here in Japan.
That said, it's impossible to avoid the fact that the company responsible for said rebirth doesn't show up at Tokyo Game Show. Last year, Nintendo was on everyone's minds, but Wii hadn't launched yet and thus there were very few games. Nintendo DS was doing well, but third parties hadn't really kicked into high gear, and they still had several high-profile PSP titles in the works. Most big games were for PlayStation 2.
What a difference a year makes.
This year, even though the show was ostensibly anchored by hardware makers Sony and Microsoft, every third party was itching to show off their Wii titles. A typical situation was that of Capcom's booth. Although they'd been on the vanguard of Xbox 360 developers and had perhaps the best PlayStation 3 exclusive at last year's TGS with Devil May Cry 4, the vast majority of their booth this year was taken up with three major Wii exclusives: Umbrella Chronicles, Zack and Wiki, and We Love Golf.
The only "next-gen" game they had was that same PlayStation 3 title, Devil May Cry 4. Only now it's multi-platform.
Things were pretty much the same at most third-party booths: much more Wii than PS3, let alone 360. But the really surprising paucity of next-gen games was at the Sony and Microsoft booths. Sony's Japan studios have never quite had the output of their Western ones, but then, they've never quite needed it. This year, Sony's booth was filled up with all kinds of Western games that the Japanese attendees really didn't care about. Even on the super-packed public days, lines for pretty much every Sony game that wasn't White Knight Story were quite short. "I played Heavenly Sword," said a friend of mine during the public days. "There was no one in line."
But at least Microsoft continued to make Sony look good with their lineup. Assassin's Creed and Halo 3 are going to be huge in the US, but is that really what you want to fix your sails to in Japan? How did Lost Odyssey, a game which is releasing in a few months, manage to no-show TGS? Those are some bad vibes, especially when you consider what a difference a playable LO demo would have made to Microsoft's showing. At least they totally lucked out by having their giant video screen face the massive Level 5 booth line, where people were waiting for about three hours at a time with nothing to do.
This isn't to say that there are not bright spots. Certainly Metal Gear Solid 4 being playable was very important for Sony insofar as it is one of the only third-party PlayStation 3 exclusives that is not essentially vaporware. It works, it's playable, it's amazing, and it's out before March in all territories. 2008 should be a great year for PS3 software, mostly because of all the stuff that's been delayed or has yet to be delayed. (Most recently: Home. Next up: place your bets.)
You can bet that CESA is going to try its damnedest to get Nintendo on board for Tokyo Game Show next year, and they probably won't. It's not like Nintendo doesn't want to show its games off to the public. They'd just prefer to do it at their own events. And I have a feeling that Nintendo's own Japan shows are eventually going to bring in so much third-party participation that they might become as important for the media to cover as TGS proper was this year.
And what of Tokyo Game Show? As I've been telling everyone who will listen, this year's TGS really seemed to me to be like one of Microsoft's X0n events, where they bring journalists out to foreign countries to distract them with an international vacation and a screwed-up biological clock, then show them the same games they could see in America just as easily. I don't want TGS to become some kind of dog-and-pony show for the press where we stay in the New Otani hotel and talk to people who live in Seattle about Halo 3. I want to cover Japanese games. If said games are never going to be released in America, so much the better.
