TOKYO – This year’s Tokyo Game Show, the world’s largest video games fair, kicked off September 15 at the Makuhari Messe convention center in the city of Chiba, east of Tokyo.
This is the first “real” Tokyo Game Show open to the general public in three years, after holding the event online in 2020 and 2021. Also this year, the exhibition for gamers about the Metaverse will be offered in a virtual reality room. The event will run until September 16 for business attendees and will be open to the general public from 2:00 p.m. on that day and will last until September 18.
The Tokyo Game Show 2022 Metaverse Platform is a virtual basement of Makuhari Messe. It can be visited for free via computer or virtual reality headsets after downloading the official app. Visitors can create their own avatar online and see the booths of 22 companies while moving in virtual space. You can also talk to each other using chat features.
This is the second time a virtual reality space has been set up since last year’s show, which drew around 210,000 people online over four days. Last year’s event also took place both in person and online, but only invited guests could attend the in-person event. In 2020, the show took place exclusively online.
On the first day of this year’s event, Sega Corp. and other entertainment companies at booths displaying their state-of-the-art gaming products. Visitors were particularly interested in the virtual reality glasses from US tech giant Meta Platforms Inc., formerly Facebook Inc., which had a test stand. A meta representative told Mainichi Shimbun that the best way for people to understand the qualities of the product is by actually using it.
This is the 32nd edition of the fair. This year, there are 605 exhibitors, including 293 companies from 37 countries and regions outside of Japan. Around 150,000 visitors are expected at the event location.
(Japanese original by Akihiro Nakajima and Hironori Takechi, Business News Department)
