In last year's version of this article, I talked about how the various companies at the Tokyo Game Show were clearly tightening their belts year-over-year. That seems to have continued this year, with some of the smallest booths I've seen from certain publishers. Again, the big mobile companies chose to largely sit things out, settling for business desks in an adjoining building over lavish, prop-filled money sinks. While there were many great games on display, one can't help but feel like this year's show was missing the spark of previous years. With Nintendo taking their usual pass on the show, VR being on the market for a while, and other hardware platforms hitting maturity, there was no new puppy to fawn over at Tokyo Game Show 2017.
That's probably why attendance was down for the first time in years. Last year's show drew a near-record high 271,224 visitors over the course of the four-day event. This year, the show brought in 254,311 visitors. While still a very impressive number, it's only the second time in the show's modern history that attendance has dropped from the previous year. One area that did see growth is in the business-to-business section, with the number of companies registered for the Asia Business Gateway matching system up from last year. It seems like the show was counting on its newly-added eSports events to pick up the slack, and it doesn't appear to have worked out as well as it could have.
Another number on the decline is the number of iOS games...