CESA gamer survey reveals good news for Nintendo

Over a quarter of Japanese gamers would like to own a GameCube, according to a survey conducted at the Tokyo Game Show by CESA, which also reveals continuing apathy towards western-developed games in the Far East.

Some 27 per cent of the 1000 gamers polled by CESA (the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association) at the show said that they would like to own a GameCube, which bodes well for the future of the console in Japan - and Microsoft can also take heart from the 17 per cent who stated that they would like to own an Xbox.

It should be noted that this isn't a representative sample of Japanese gamers, with CESA admitting to US news site GameSpot that TGS attendees tend to be hard-core gamers and therefore their responses can differ from the public at large. However, hard core gamers are often seen as key opinion formers in this market, and as such the survey results are interesting.

Unsurprisingly, the RPG genre was the most popular among those surveyed, with 39 per cent of gamers stating that it was their favourite game genre, while the second place genre, strategy gaming, scored only 7 per cent. First person shooters and network games both scored under 1 per cent in the poll.

More interestingly for western developers and publishers, only 1 per cent of respondents stated that they currently own a piece of game software developed overseas - and despite the relatively decent success of games such as Ratchet & Clank and Grand Theft Auto III in Japan in the past year, only 4 per cent expressed an interest in buying non-Japanese games in future.

CESA also publishes an annual white paper on the state of the Japanese games industry, which incorporates data from wider surveys as well as polls of retailers and publishers in its study. The next white paper from the group is due in summer 2004.

External Link [CESA Website (English Pages)]