You may already be familiar with CERO from past articles and translations that I’ve written. They are the ratings board of the Japanese video game industry, but there’s another important industry group called CESA that does a lot of research about wider Japanese gaming demographics. They released their white paper a couple of weeks ago and a website called Game Business.jp summed up some of the information within. The full article is translated below:
—
Domestic Gaming Population is at 43,360,000 People, the Number of Console Owners Also Made Clear — 2016 CESA General Lifestyle Survey Report
March 22, 2016 6:30PM
CESA (Computer Entertainment Software Association) CESA has published a report paper summarizing their survey findings regarding the usage of games in 2015 entitled “2016 CESA General Lifestyle Survey Report – Japanese Game Players and Non-Players Survey-.”
In the “2016 CESA General Lifestyle Survey Report – Japanese Game Players and Non-Players,” a survey was carried out for general lifestyle targeting those who live in Japan nationwide from the age of 3 to 79. Using numbers expanded for the entire population as an estimate from a sample of 2,869 usable survey results, it has posted the contents of its summary that make up the “General Consumer Game Use/Lifestyle” part of its “CESA White Paper.”
- Smartphone/tablet players take the top place in the gaming population
When investigating the number of users who are either continuously playing console games, PC games, smartphone/tablet games, cell phone games and arcade games, the overall population came to a result of 43,360,000 people. On top of this, comparing the number of continuous players separately in each of the 5 hardware categories, the amount of continuous players in smartphone/tablet gaming was the most, estimated at 30,990,000 people.
Compared to other gaming platforms, smartphone/tablet games and PC games were ones in which players could play in while doing other things. Since there are an extremely large amount of titles that are principally free to play, especially with smartphone/tablet games, the style of playing during short moments of free time may be solidifying. The results are a chance to see that the “play divide” between “play a little every day” smartphone/tablet games and “sit down and really get into it to play” console games are continuing to become split.
- Console owners are at 52,240,000 people, continuous players at 15,390,000 people
The categories are defined as such: those who own a console in their home are called “console owners,” those who play their consoles are called “active console players,” and those who continue to play their consoles are called “continuous console players.” The results were that there were 52,240,000 console owners; 32,000,000 active console players and 15,390,000 continuous console players.
Among each console game maker, the topic of increasing the amount of use is often raised, and with these results, the current situation we’re seeing is that the demographic of people who “have a console, but don’t really play it” is quite large. It seems like one aspect for each of the console hardware manufacturers will be how to supply bewitching content and software to make players turn on their systems.
- Among console play percentages, Nintendo’s 3DS is at the top
Asked which households owned which consoles, the result was that the number one most owned platform was the Nintendo DS at 26.8% (2014 survery: 30.8%), and 2nd place went to the Nintendo 3DS at 25.5% (2014 survey: 23.1%). At the same time as it demonstrates the brand awareness of Nintendo’s portable consoles, we can also know that the transition between the old Nintendo DS to the current 3DS is still moving a bit over time.
As well, when asking the respondents about which console they themselves play (play percentage), the results were that the Nintendo 3DS was number one at 13.3% (2014 survey: 12.7%), but number 2 was surprisingly the Wii at 11.9% (2014 survey: 13.2%). While the explosive popularity of the Wii is now an older console, and may not have the power it had in its heyday, perhaps this points to the fact that people are playing long-term games that have stuck with them in their lifestyle.
—
The last paragraph has been cut because it’s just an advertisement that the CESA report can be bought and people can look up all sorts of information in it and it has no relevant information on statistics. It’s quite expensive, so if you want more statistics, you’d to have to pay a fair amount.
Karasu Corps 