Tokyo Game Show 2021, the definitive guide

Tokyo Game Show 2021

Also this year the Tokyo Games Show 2021 will be a virtual event that will take place between 30 September and 3 October 2021 directly on your browser. It is the second time that the event has renounced the physical presence of sector operators, due to the COVID-19 pandemic still underway. So no strolls through the halls of Makuhari Messe, the center that traditionally hosts it. No visits to the stands in search of the oddities produced by oriental software houses. No queues to try the games from the available stations. No sorties for Akihabara in search of videogame rarities and more. No noise from the metropolis, which has always been the perfect soundtrack for waiting for the days of the fair to begin and no Japanese food, unless someone wants to celebrate the event by ordering sushi from some oriental restaurant in our area.

In short, despite the good intentions, the risk is that we will find ourselves in front of a somewhat subdued event, as indeed have been the E3 and Gamescom of the last two years. From a strictly epidermal point of view, the virtual struggles enormously to replace the real. However, there will be some reason for interest and it will certainly make sense to follow the most important moments of the Tokyo Game Show 2021, both to understand how the market is moving in recent years, and to understand where it wants to go.

History of the Tokyo Game Show

Tokyo Game Show 2021, the poster of the event It was 1996 when the Tokyo Game Show was born. The consoles of that time were PlayStation, Saturn and Nintendo 64 and the Japanese market was all a bubbling of news and proposals. There were so many announcements to make and so many games to show, that the first editions of the TGS were split in two: one took place in the spring, the other in the fall. It was like this until 2002, after which the spring edition was canceled and only the autumn one remained. The new titles announced by the many local software houses were dozens and the traditional market, as we define it today, appeared stable and in full health. Who does not remember the very long reports of trade magazines (at the time internet sites like ours were still taking their first steps), full of wonders that we will have played who knows when? The first TGS headquarters was the Tokyo Big Sight, which was abandoned in 2002 for the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, still used today (at least until the last edition in attendance).

The Makuhari Messe seen from Google Maps In those years the whole world looked to Tokyo to discover the latest news of a dominant branch of industry, solid and full of creative vigor. Then, slowly, things changed. Some of the big names present at the time are still active, but the fair itself has lost its importance, inexorably reflecting the greater fragmentation of the market and the reduction in the number of traditional productions, as well as the new ways of communicating adopted by publishers with the advent of Internet. The Japanese market itself is now enormously different: where coin-ops and consoles were predominant in recent years, today the mobile sector is the dominant one, with the sole exception of Nintendo Switch, the only one holding up against the rise of the new ones. and ubiquitous gaming systems.

The last two years of the Tokyo Game Show have been marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the organizers to close the event making it virtual only. A little bit what happened at E3 and at Gamescom. The hope is that the 2022 edition will be back in attendance, although there is still no certainty that this will happen.

Tokyo Game Show 2021 - The complete calendar of events

The King of Fighters XV will be one of the games at the fair Let's see the complete calendar of events that will characterize the Tokyo Game Show 2021, divided day by day.

September 30th

10:00 am: Opening event Tokyo Game Show 11:00: conference on the theme of the fair: "We'll always have games". 12:00: GameraGame Now Tokyo Game Show 2021 Special 1:00: SNK Presents King of Fighters XV (English） 4:00: SK Telecom Game Show 5:00: Team Madness Games - It's Mealtime! Presentation 6:00: Microsoft - Xbox Live Stream Focused on What's New for Eastern Gamers 7:00 am: Konami - New information on Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel and updates on key franchise titles 8:00 am: Spike Chunsoft Special 9:00 am: D3Publisher Live broadcast 10: 00: Capcom Online Presentation 11:00: IzanagiGames - Yurukill Special!

October 1st

10:00 TGS Official Program - How the world sees Japanese video games 11:00 Sense of Wonder Night 2021 4:00 NTTe-Sports Special Program 5:00 Happinet Game Showcase (1st stage) 6:00 505 Games, showcase of upcoming titles 7:00 Square Enix Presents 8:00 Bandai Namco - THE iDOLM @ STER STARLIT SEASON 9:00 Level-5 - MEGATON Lab. 10:00 SEGA ATLUS CHANNEL "SEGA NEW" TGS Special

2 October

9:00: TGS Official Program - Hironobu Sakaguchi and Naoki Yoshida talk about the appeal and potential of RPGs 10:00: Happinet Game Showcase (2nd stage) 12:00: Tencent Games 12:30: Japan Game Awards 2021 2:00: Lilith Games Warpath, New Game Release Conference 4: 00: GungHo Online Entertainment - Puzzle & Dragons 6:00: Japan Game Awards: 2021 Games of the Year Division 8:00: Koei Tecmo Special Program 10:00: Konami - Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 4th Heart Stage / First Gameplay Reveal 11: 00: DMM Games - "Touken Ranbu Musou TGS2021 Travel Edition" & "DMM GAMES Special Information"

October 3

10:00: TGS Official Program - It's really hard to become a professional game streamer ? What's behind the scenes? 11:00: S-Game - New ARPG arrives, new expedition starts 12:00: Japan Electronics College 1:00: Arc System Works 1:00: Japan Game Awards 2021 3:00: 110 Industries - Feature presentation of new AAA products currently in development 4:00: NC Soft Special Program - Lineage W 5:00: GungHo Online Entertainment - Ninjala TOKYO GAME SHOW 2021CUP 6:00: Ubisoft - UBIDAY2021 Online × TGS Special Program 7:00: AKRacing Presents 「AKTalking」 8: 00: Wright Flyer Studios HEAVEN BURNS RED TGS2021 Special Program 9:00: miHoYo - Genshin Impact TGS 2021 Program 10:00: fingger 11:00: Gran Saga - Unpacked | Special Show 12:00: TGS2021 Closing of the event

The Tokyo Music Fes will also take place on 2 and 3 October, with orchestral performances of songs from famous video games such as Sonic, Monster Hunter, Final Fantasy, Tales and others.

Announcements and possible surprises

Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin will be part of the Square Enix line up The fact that TGS 2021 risks being a weak edition tells us a detail of no small importance: the scarcity of rumors coming from the fair. Aside from the official line-ups, everyone assumes that there will be no big surprise announcements, which makes us understand how little faith there is towards the event, which has lost its catalytic role for the Japanese industry.

Among the noisiest absences there are certainly those of Sony and Nintendo, who will not attend and will not show anything, resulting completely in hiding. Microsoft will instead be present with an Xbox Showcase, but the Redmond giant has already got its hands on, stating that it will be a moment dedicated to oriental players and that, therefore, we should not expect new announcements. In short, the company wants to communicate with the local public, showing them what is coming in the coming months, in particular in the Xbox Game Pass, which can also be used on mobile systems thanks to the cloud. We can think of it as a kind of review.

Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires, excited to know the release date? Looking to Japanese publishers, Square Enix presented its line-up which will include all known titles: Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, Actraiser Renaissance, Chocobo GP, Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier, Forspoken, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, Triangle Strategy, and Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars. It will certainly be a pleasure to return to see some of these titles, especially the lesser-known and lesser-known ones, but even in this case we shouldn't expect much else. No Final Fantasy XVI, incidentally, and no surprise bombs, which are now increasingly a mirage during these events.

For the rest during the TGS 2021: we will learn about the release date of Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires; Koei Tecmo should announce a new yet mysterious game; a new game of the Atelier series will be announced for the 25th anniversary of the same, we will see the souls-like Project Galileo which has as its most interesting feature that of being set and developed in Italy and SEGA will present its new role-playing game, almost certainly a mobile title with gacha mechanics, which may never arrive in our country.

For the rest there are no big reasons of interest, at least from the point of view of potential announcements, also because, as already mentioned, the two main local hardware producers will be missing, those who actually have the market in their hands console over there.

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