Is Japan a game-player paradise?

As a home and two-dimensional culture of the country, many people think Japan should be a game player's paradise, but the fact is not as good as you think. The current Japanese game retailing is in danger, industry insiders said, so continue to develop, within 5 years, in Japan on the streets can not see the game shop.

According to Kotaku, a Japanese retail industry person named Osho (Osho) says the game shops in Japan's streets are disappearing in the face of a double whammy of online stores and digital games like Amazon.

"The physical store that specializes in selling games will soon be stuck." "It looks like they're going to disappear in 5 years," Osho said. ”

Osho said that consumers go to the physical store to buy games because of concessions and convenience, once the online store to solve both problems, no one would like to go out to buy games.

Of course, this is not a unique phenomenon in the Japanese region. In the past 10 years, we have watched the real game shop in England go downhill, but there are still a lot of survival and good maintenance.

In Japan, there are some special reasons to make things worse than the West. The host market is weakening year after year, and the trend is obvious, while mobile game sales rose, in addition, the Japanese players favorite is the portable Palm machine. But in the west, the situation is the opposite, the palm machine has been dead, and the second generation mainframe performance is very outstanding.

When it comes to how the retail industry is reversing the downturn, Osho says it is also important to develop new businesses and diversify business. He said that the Pao company he knew was getting better after he started selling game cards. In addition, according to the game company's statistics, 2013 by 35% of the digital version of the game is sold in physical retail outlets, direct purchase with cash! And, where players can also buy second-hand games and hosts,

It is thought that by 2018, global physical and digital game purchases will reach 1:1, and in Japan, this ratio is likely to come early.

Once upon a time, both in Japan and Britain, shopping malls and large supermarkets have played games as the biggest selling point. Perhaps in the near future, the physical game store will be like the music DVD store as the total disappearance, which we can not stop the trend. But if you enjoy the satisfaction of holding a hoping box out of the game store, keep supporting the physical game while it is still there, because it will die forever.