Another Tokyo Game Show has come and gone. It wrapped up nearly a month ago, actually. But Famitsu magazine in Japan has just gotten around to publishing the results of a survey they conducted on the show floor, asking over a thousand attendees about what grabbed their minds the most this year.
Some of the results:
- Capcom's Monster Hunter 4 took top honors as the game TGS visitors were most paying attention to. This comes despite the fact that MH4 actually hit retail on the first day of the show itself. "I'm spending my days hunting with my friends and co-workers," said one pollee. "I'm happy that the series has remained fun to play no matter how long you work at it," added another.
This was followed by Namco Bandai Games' God Eater 2 ("As a numbered sequel in the series, I'm wondering how much of an advancement it's going to be") and Nintendo's Pokemon X/Y ("I've played the entire series," said one man in his forties, "and even though I'm older now, I still can't help but get excited about it").
- Capcom was also the most popular response when people were asked which company they're paying the most attention to, with a full quarter of responses going to the Monster Hunter maker. "They're always keeping the world market in perspective in their work," one replier said, "and as a result they're leading Japan in a large variety of genres."
Square Enix was close behind, however, with 235 votes ("I think they've done a lot to restore the fans' trust with their FFXIV reboot," said one respondant). Sega lagged behind in third place, with one younger replier, asked why he picked them, simply saying "Because Atlus games are going to be with Sega now."
(Microsoft and mobile-game giant GREE were tied for 12th in this question, despite both having enormous booths at TGS.)
- When asked which games they found the most fun on the show floor, TGS attendees gave a massive swath of replies. As a result, the final polling was extremely close and instead of any big-name title winning, it was Puzzle & Dragons Z, the upcoming 3DS port of GungHo's mobile money machine, winning top honors. "It was fun in a different way from the smartphone version," said one attendee. It was kind of moving in a way to see the characters get animated."
In second place was Puyo Puyo Tetris, Sega's multiplatform puzzle mashup, and then followed three different rhythm games, including the latest in the Theatrhythm and Hatsune Miku series.
- Somewhat more predictably, Konami's Metal Gear Solid 5 was the top response for best promotional video, beating out Final Fantasy 15 by a handful of votes. "It's pretty much just like a movie!" said one attendee. "The evolution of the graphics is amazing, and the video had a lot of unexplained mysteries to it."
- With all of these responses, you'd almost forget that Sony was showing the PlayStation 4 to the general public on the show floor. SCE Japan Asia won the best-booth title at this year's TGS ("There was a nice balance between hardware displays, game stations and the assorted stage events"), although Sega wasn't that far behind ("I like how they passed out tickets so you didn't have to wait in line to play anything").
- This being Japan, attendees were naturally asked which booth's "companion girls" (like booth babes but usually wearing smart-looking uniforms) were the best. The results, from fifth to first: Microsoft, Sega, Capcom, GREE, and Namco Bandai Games. Japan's gamers may not have cared about MS or GREE's games much, but apparently the two outfits offered plenty of eye candy of a different sort.