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I made it to Japan this week for my first Tokyo Game Show. Yes, in 27 years of regular coverage of games, I have never been to the show until now. Here’s some of my impressions of the event, which should draw around 200,000 people or so — many of them cosplayers on the weekend.
First, it is pretty massive. There are 985 companies at the show, compared to 787 in 2023. They’re occupying 3,252 booths, compared to 2,682 booths last year. There are 44 countries attending, the same as a year ago. And there are 2,850 titles on display, compared to 2,291 a year ago. On almost every measure, the numbers are up; we’ll see how final attendance looks later on.
Palworld booth at Tokyo Game Show 2024.
There are some interesting figures on platforms and genres. While Nintendo is not at the show, there are 295 Nintendo Switch games, up from 234 last year. Meanwhile, Pocket Pair, the maker of Palworld, was there with a large booth and a lot of cosplayers. Nintendo sued Pocket Pair for making what everyone jokingly called “Pokemon with guns.”
Palworld’s booth worker.
There are 156 PS4 and 238 PS5 games, up from 144 and 158 a year ago. In fact, Sony was there showing off the quality of the PlayStation 5 Pro. You can see Gran Turismo running on it in this video.
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Xbox has 172 X/S games, up from 103 last year, and 86 Xbox One games, up from 78. Microsoft showed off a bunch of its new games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in a special broadcast at the Tokyo Game Show.
Xbox also announced that Starcraft I and II (from the Blizzard division of the newly acquired Activision Blizzard business) will be coming to Game Pass on November 5, and players heard the Japanese voiceover in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle for the first time.
From Konami, the Xbox audience saw the latest visual update on Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater with updated graphics, and Japanese studios Denki Works and Critical Reflex debuted a world premiere with their classically inspired Tanuki Pon’s Summer and much, much more. Gilles Langourieux, CEO of Virtuos, an Asia-focused external development company with 3,800 people, noted that his team of external developers helped with the Snake Eater title for more than two years. He told me that he feels like the gaming market is getting better. (We hope so. Our theme at GamesBeat Next 2024 coming on October 28-29 in San Francisco is back to growth).
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Virtuos CEO Gilles Langourieux at TGS 2024.
There are 625 Steam games, up from 437; 496 PC, up from 363, 188 iOS, up from 161, and 190 Android, up from 163. There are only three PSVR2 titles, down from 12 last year; 6 Valve Index, down from 19 last year; 32 Meta Quest 2, down from 27 last year; and 6 HTC Vive, down from 19 last year.
That definitely feels like VR is on the decline in terms of its share of the market, while Steam, Sony and Nintendo and even Xbox are in a very healthy state.
In terms of genres, there are 500 action games, up from 353 last year; 347 RPGs, down from 379 last year; 397 adventure games, up from 340 last year; 208 simulation games, down from 257 last year; 74 shooting games, down from 93 last year; 155 puzzle games, up from 100 last year; 96 ARPGs, up from 60 last year; 187 action adventure, up from 115 last year; 51 sports, up from 29 last year; 28 racing, down from 29 last year; and 47 action shooting, up from 44 last year.
I would note that I haven’t seen nearly as many layoffs among the Japanese or Asian game companies as I have seen in the West. Kenji Matsubara, CEO of SNK, said in an interview with me in Tokyo that the Japanese game industry may have had a more conservative approach during the pandemic, not hiring so many people as the Western companies did. As a result, they didn’t have to break with the tradition of lifetime employment and cut a lot of jobs as the post-pandemic times led to a drop in gaming demand.
Ken Kutaragi gives a keynote at Tokyo Game Show 2024.
A number of executives noted in interviews that the Chinese game companies have come on strong. Ken Kutaragi, father of the PlayStation, gave a keynote talk at the Tokyo Game Show where he foresaw a shift from computer entertainment (which he saw growing out of toys and then video games) to AI-infused media with supercomputing technology. He foresees an age of “real-time computing” that will be 100 times bigger than the game industry we have today. That’s very optimistic.
Ken Kutaragi sees a great convergence of tech leading to real-time computing.
In the meantime, he noted the success of Chinese game company Game Science, which sold 20 million copies in its first month of sales for Black Myth Wukong. Alongside other hits like Genshin Impact, Zenless Zen Zero and Honkai Star Rail, it feels like the Chinese have come into their own.
Shu Yoshida of Sony and Geoff Keighley of The Game Awards with Dean Takahashi at TGS.
During the week, I made visits to Sony Electronics, Sega, SNK and more. And, for the first time in Tokyo, I co-hosted a dinner party with Xsolla for Japanese game companies, making a mark for GamesBeat in Japan for the first time in eight years. In the previous trip eight years ago, Matsubara, then at Sega, was also on a panel that I moderated along with the Canadian government as they pitched Japanese devs to set up show in Canada.
Mike Milanov, right, head of Qiddiya Gaming, promoting the Saudi gigaproject at TGS 2024.
That was one sign of the global movements in gaming, and we see even more of that today. SNK’s sister company, Manga Productions, acquired Toei, a maker of manga and anime shows, and it’s using that talent to train interns in Saudi Arabia. Kenji Matsubara, CEO of SNK, has expanded the company from 200 to more than 600 since Saudi Arabia’s Misk Foundation acquired it.
Kenji Matsubara, CEO of SNK, with Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat.
That enabled the company to bring back SNK’s fan favorite, Fatal Fury, for the first time in 26 years.
SNK is bringing back Fatal Fury for the first time in 26 years.
In fact, Mike Milanov, head of Qiddiya Gaming in Saudi Arabia, had a booth at the Tokyo Game Show with a cyberpunk theme to promote the esports and gaming district of Qiddiya, a modern city that the Saudi’s are building outside Riyadh as a “giga project.”
The Street Fighter esports stars draw a crowd at Qiddiya’s booth at the Tokyo Game Show 2024.
Qiddiya hosted a panel of Street Fighter esports stars at its booth — and it drew a massive crowd.
Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat at Sega HQ in Tokyo.
It’s a global gaming business. It’s good to remember that when the blues and business cycles hit any given part of the business. I’m glad to see a part of the world — long overdue for me to visit — where gaming is thriving.
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Some of the most watched and listened to music on YouTube and YouTube Music disappeared on Saturday, replaced by a short message:
Video unavailable
This video contains content from SESAC. It is not available in your country.
That is probably not what people expected when they tried to stream Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” or other songs from artists as varied as Kendrick Lamar, Britney Spears, Green Day, Kanye West, and Burna Boy.
This leaves two questions: what is SESAC, and when is the music coming back?
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SESAC stands for the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, which has been around since 1930 and, according to its website, “…currently licenses the public performance of more than 1.5 million songs on behalf of its 15,000+ affiliated songwriters, composers, and music publishers.”
It’s smaller than similar organizations like BMI and ASCAP, but SESAC lists many big-name artists in its portfolio. In 2017, it was acquired by the private equity firm Blackstone.
Answering the question of when the SESAC music ban on YouTube and YouTube Music will end, or even what music has been removed, is a little harder.
SESAC has a searchable database of its repertory, although not all the songs listed there appear to have been removed. There’s even a 44,267-page PDF available on the site if you’d like to read the complete list. But not all songs were affected in the same way. While one listing for Kanye West’s “Power” is blocked, as of this writing the music video version continues to stream just fine.
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The licensing organization hasn’t commented publicly, but YouTube did respond to an inquiry from The Verge, as spokesperson Mariana de Felice writes:
We have held good faith negotiations with SESAC to renew our existing deal. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach an equitable agreement before its expiration. We take copyright very seriously and as a result, content represented by SESAC is no longer available on YouTube in the US. We are in active conversations with SESAC and are hoping to reach a new deal as soon as possible.
According to an unnamed source cited by Variety, this could be a negotiating tactic by YouTube because, they say, “the previous deal actually does not expire until next week.”
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Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now nearly 1,000 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today – or scroll down further for the answers.
What letters do today’s Quordle answers start with?
• S
• B
• W
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• S
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM.
Quordle today (game #979) – the answers
(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)
The answers to today’s Quordle, game #979, are…
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A couple of today’s words might cause some problems; SERIF is a relatively uncommon word that has a very uncommon format, with that IF ending, while SLEEK contains a repeated E. WRITE was the one I lost a guess on, though: that -RI-E format is a very common one, and could be the likes of TRIBE or TRITE as well as the eventual answer. Other than that, though, my three start words did the hard work and I survived with a guess to spare.
Unfortunately I was far less careful with the Daily Sequence and failed for the second time in only a few days. There were some very difficult words there, admittedly, but I still should have played a lot more sensibly.
A silicon chip could connect quantum devices more easily than ever
Shutterstock/Fit Ztudio
We may be a step closer to unhackable quantum Wi-Fi thanks to a chip that could establish wireless communication between a wide range of quantum devices.
Quantum communication systems have a distinct advantage over the wireless and fibre-based networks that we use now: they are incredibly hard to hack. This is because they use the quantum states of objects like particles of light to encode and transmit information – those states allow for more complex encryption and can easily reveal if they have been tampered with.
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A SpaceX Crew Dragon craft has launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying two new crew members to the International Space Station (ISS). The launch had been delayed a number of times, most recently due to Hurricane Helene, but lifted off successfully at 1:17 p.m. ET on Saturday, September 28.
The spacecraft, carried by a Falcon 9 rocket and launched from Space Launch Complex-40, carries NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov as members of the Crew-9 mission. It is unusual for a Dragon to launch carrying just two crew members, as it typically carries crews of four. In this case, the spare seats are reserved for the homeward journey of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams who are currently on the ISS, having traveled there on the first crewed test flight of the Boeing Starliner.
Following issues with the Starliner’s thrusters, NASA decided not to being home Wilmore and Williams on the Starliner but instead to have them stay on the station and join Crew-9. The four-person crew will now return to Earth using the Dragon spacecraft in February 2025.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 Launch
The re-jigging of crew assignments required some changes around this launch, which had originally been scheduled for August. “This mission required a lot of operational and planning flexibility. I congratulate the entire team on a successful launch today, and godspeed to Nick and Aleksandr as they make their way to the space station,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Our NASA wizards and our commercial and international partners have shown once again the success that comes from working together and adapting to changing circumstances without sacrificing the safe and professional operations of the International Space Station.”
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Hague and Gorbunov are expected to arrive at the ISS on the afternoon of Sunday, September 29, where they will join the ISS Expedition 72 crew. There are currently nine people aboard the ISS — six NASA astronauts and three Roscosmos cosmonauts — who will welcome the new arrivals with a welcome ceremony.
The arrival of the Dragon at the ISS and the docking procedure, followed by the hatch opening and welcome ceremony, will be livestreamed by NASA. You can watch along on NASA’s YouTube channel, which will show coverage beginning at 3:30 p.m. ET on Sunday.
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