New report suggests that there are 3 million fewer PC gamers in Japan than 10 years ago, despite the market having at least tripled in size

ted.litchfield@futurenet.com (Ted Litchfield)
2025-08-14 18:56:00
www.pcgamer.com

As reported by Automaton, Famitsu has released a preview of its annual Famitsu Game Hakusho, a survey of the games industry by Kadokawa ASCII Research Laboratories. One confounding takeaway from the data is that the games market in Japan is bigger than ever, with the PC space nearly matching consoles for economic impact, while there are slightly fewer gamers⁠ in the country overall, and many millions fewer PC gamers than just a decade ago.

Japanese games industry by market size (Famitsu estimate)

Overall market 2024: 2,396.1 billion ($16.2 billion)
Overall market 2023: 2,317.6 billion ($15.7 billion)
PC gaming market 2024: 265.3 billion ($1.8 billion)

Japanese gamers by population (Famitsu estimate)

Overall 2024: 54.753 million
Overall 2014: 48.55 million
PC 2024: 14.52 million
PC 2023:14.45 million
PC 2014: 17.49 million

The market numbers correlate with those produced by investment strategy firm Epyllion earlier this year for the global games market: Strong growth for PC and mobile sales, with a slight decline for consoles. The population figure is a real headscratcher, though: Three million fewer PC gamers than reported in the 2015 Famitsu Game Hakusho.

Data firm Newzoo has likewise shown enormous growth for the PC market in Japan in recent years, while last October, Kantan reported that Japan’s Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association (CESA) shared data showing that Japan’s PC gaming sector tripled in size from 2020 to 2024—that’s going by software sales alone, while the Famitsu Gaming Hakusho accounts for software and hardware.

As for how to explain this discrepancy, the public preview of the 2025 Famitsu Game Hakusho has the following summary of Japan’s overall gaming growth (produced via machine translation): “Rising prices in Japan are also affecting the game market, with price increases across the market, including not only game consoles and peripherals but also subscriptions and item charges, directly leading to an expansion of the market size.”

Supporting this in the PC space, Automaton pointed to a June 2025 The Nikkei article reporting that pre-built PC prices in Japan have risen by 40% since 2019, while some parts⁠—most likely graphics cards⁠—have “more than tripled” in price during the same period. One possible explanation is that Japan has fewer PC gamers, but they’re all paying a lot more for the privilege.

But that doesn’t seem like the full story: As PC Gamer senior editor Wes Fenlon pointed out, if you had a gaming PC in 2019, you’re probably still using it in 2025, and the people’s champion GTX 970 and 1060 graphics cards released in 2015 and ’16 respectively can still run a host of games today.

Another factor that may help to explain the market/population discrepancy is the decline in popularity of cheap and free browser games in favor of mobile gaming, but there isn’t hard data available to back this supposition up. Whatever the case may be, there’s reason to doubt that three million hardcore Japanese PC gamers beat their desktops into plowshares and left the hobby behind in the past ten years.

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