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Tokyo Game Show may have underwhelmed, but Japan remains the heart of gaming

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  • Tokyo Game Show may have underwhelmed, but Japan remains the heart of gaming

    If you're after bold proclamations about the state of gaming in Japan, you might be better off looking elsewhere. Ask a native, perhaps, or someone more intimate with the daily gaming habits of people who live here. This past week I've been just a tourist, passing through with all the residual wide-eyed wonder of most fleeting visitors to Tokyo. And while the game show itself might have underwhelmed, there was lots to excite elsewhere.
    It was, as has now become standard, a fairly low-key Tokyo Game Show. There wasn't much by way of surprises - Square Enix's Left Alive was one of the few genuinely new games to make an appearance at Sony's pre-show conference, and elsewhere the big announcements were a brace of PS2 revivals in the shape of Gungrave's unexpected PlayStation VR return and Zone of the Ender 2's remaster for that same platform - and if you wanted to make the argument for the diminishing relevance of traditional Japanese console games as you walked the well-spaced show floor on one of the quiet business days, you'd have found plenty to back your case.
    I'd find plenty to counter that, though. There's the diminishing relevance of game shows such as this to take into account, for one, with many publishers now opting for the more direct approach. Or maybe there's Tokyo Games Show's proximity to Gamescom, to Paris Games Week and to Sony's own PlayStation Experience, all of which leaves little room for new announcements. Not that the quarter of a million people who made the trek out to Chiba on the public days were that bothered; the enthusiasm, energy and colour in those crowds reaffirmed that, no matter what's on show on the Makuhari Messe floor, Japan is still the most exciting destination if you've any love for video games.
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