Jump to content

EroGame Industry declined by 6.4% to 19.1 billion yen, reported by YanoResearch


poplarbrook

Recommended Posts

http://www.yano.co.jp/press/pdf/1489.pdf

On January 15, Yano Research (矢野経済研究所) released the summary part of their Otaku Market Report 2015 (「オタク」市場に関する調査結果 2015). This report estimated otaku-related market size of 2014 by calculating domestic end user retail prices. Overall, the otaku market is expected to increase except a few fields (分野) like Adult Games (アダルトゲーム) which observed to decline.

 

There are two fields in this report that are related to visual novels: adult games and date simulation games. Adult games are defined as computer games that aims to attract players by sex content and are rated 18+ or 15+ (18歳未満(もしくは15歳未満)のプレイ・購入が禁止され、性的好奇心を満足させることを主目的としたコンピュータゲーム。). Date simulation games, or renai games (恋愛ゲーム), are defined as games simulate dating with fiction character in game but excludes adult games from above; computer games, console games, mobile games and online content that fit in this criteria are included. Price of platforms, connection fee, mobile packet fee are not included when calculating  . ( ゲームに登場するキャラクターとの仮想恋愛を主目的としたゲーム。但し、上記「アダルトゲーム」に該当するものは除く。家庭用ゲーム機やパソコン向けゲームソフトの他、モバイル端末向けコンテンツ、オンラインコンテンツを含む。ゲームに用い るプラットフォーム、接続費用、パケット代は除外。 )

 

2014 年度のアダルトゲーム市場規模は前年度比6.4%減の 191 億円であった。不正利用や、参入事業者及びコンテンツの減少により、縮小傾向が続いているものの、縮小幅は緩やかになってきている。

Adult game market in 2014 has declined by 6.4% and the size was 19.1 billion yen. Piracy, decrease of numbers of developer and content contribute to this trend. The market is expected to decline but not as sharply as a few years ago. (Well, strangely, Yano's otaku market report 13 says the size of adult game market in 2013 was 18.8 billion yen...)

 

2014 年度の恋愛ゲームの市場規模は前年度比5.4%増の137億円であった。業界内における競争は激化しているものの、一般女性向けコンテンツが好調に推移していることから、市場は拡大基調である。

Date simulation games in 2014 had increased by 5.4% to 13.7 billion yen. The competition with in the field has become fierce, while the growing size of otome content (games for female players) forms the basis of a blooming market.

 

In addition, 95 people answered the survey about their expenditure on adult games. The average expenditure was 18,354 yen, which contrasts 41,877 yen reported by 103 people from otaku market report 2014.

 

That's what you guys may be interested in. I may translate the rest of the report if I have the chance. 

 

------updated------

Other markets in 2014

Doujinshi Market: Increased by 3.4% to 75.7 billion yen due to expansion of download sales.

Plastic Model Market: Increased by 2.8% to 26.1 billion yen due to expansion of character and scale model (real-life vehicle, jet, building and more).

(I assume there is only retail price calculated; tools and paints required to complete a model may not be included)

Figure: Increased by 1.4% to 31.6 billion yen due to weaker yen and higher retail price, growth of female fans and prosperity of inbound consumption (foreign visitor's purchase),

Doll: Decreased by 0.7% to 13.4 billion yen due to fixed user group and no significant user growth.

Railway Model: Increased by 4.5% to 9.2 billion yen due to more people are interested in Shinkansen.

Idol Market: Increased by 37.4% to 118.6 billion yen due to support from core fans of Johnny & Associates as well as AKB48. Rise of many new groups cannot be ignored too.

Professional Wrestling Market: Decreased by 1.5% to 12.1 billion yen. Though new fans were attracted, the expenditure was lower.

Cosplay Consume Market: Increased by 1.7% to 43 billion yen due to expansion of light users.

Maid/Cosplay Related Business: Increased by 0.9% to 11.2 billion yen. The boom of Maid Cafe and cosplay eateries has ended. General people and foreign visitors led the market.

AV (Pornography) Market: Decreased by 0.8% to 51.2 billion yen. Increase of number of heavy users and internet users counteracts the shrinking trend.

Boy's Love (Yaoi) Market: Decreased by 0.9% to 21.2 billion yen. There is a struggle of increase in drama CDs, despite strong growth of digital books and doujins.

VOCALOID Market: Increased by 3.4% to 9 billion yen due to increase of user generated content, character goods of Miku and booming lives.

Airgun Survival Game: Increased by 10.8% to 14.4 billion yen due to more places in city center are suitable for survival game and more female novices are attracted.

Anime and manga are not included, but they have been surveyed by the Association of Japanese Animations and Japanese Research Institute for Publications. Anime industry (including oversea market and character goods) has increased by 10.4% to 1.6296 trillion yen in 2014. Published manga (retailers and magazines) has been declining, to a biz of 360 billion yen in 2013. The same goes for South Korea comic publication too. Nevertheless, digital manga has experienced tremendous growth, estimated to exceed 80 billion yen years ago. Yano used to survey the size of digital manga market but they did not continue these two years...

 

Consumer Survey:

"Are you an otaku perceived by yourself and others?" Surveyed 9,862 people aged 15 to 69 in Japan, 21.1% of them answered "yes" and 78.9% answered "no".

Of the 2,080 people who answered "yes", "are you married or have been in love?"

31.2% of them answered "I'm single and I have not been with anyone", 17.8% answered "I'm single but with someone before", 13.2% answered "I'm unmarried but with someone now", 37.9% answered "I am married or divorced/widowed now".

 

Omake:

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/efemeral/20121016/1350386490

20121016194511.png

"These years eroge market size has decrease by 300,000 volumes each year (around 2011)"(近年エロゲの市場規模が毎年エロゲ30万本分ずつ減少している)

https://www.yano.co.jp/market_reports/C53112100

Yano's cool Japan/Otaku market report 2011

「アダルトゲームオタク」の推定人数:約125万人、男女比:88.0%:12.0%

It's estimated that there are 1.25 million Japanese claim themselves as adult game otaku and the gender ratio is 88% male and 12% female.

「恋愛ゲーム(恋愛シミュレーションゲーム)オタク」の推定人数:約179万人、男女比:45.6%:54.4%

 It's estimated that there are 1.79 million Japanese claim themselves as date simulation otaku and the gender ratio is 46% male and 54% female.(Well I just rounded the number)

 

I am pretty confident but English is not my mother tongue and my Japanese is not as good:) Feel free to give feedback:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, poplarbrook said:

Adult game market in 2014 has declined by 6.4% and the size was 19.1 billion yen. Piracy, decrease of numbers of developer and content contribute to this trend. The market is expected to decline but not as sharply as a few years ago. (Well, strangely, Yano's otaku market report 13 says the size of adult game market in 2013 was 18.8 billion yen...)

:wafuu:

I was expecting something along those lines but it still sucks to hear it. Piracy really is killing this industry.

4 minutes ago, Nightmare799 said:

Maybe those games would sell better if stuff like devil on the G-string, fate/stay night, or fruit of grisaia kept coming out, and if they gave those titles official support in west along with purchase platform.

Yeah if more and more games kept on flowing into the western market, I would at least hope that it would help the industry somewhat. On that note, we have seen a decent amount of in house translations or simultaneous English / Japanese releases recently. I hope that this trend will continue.

 

I guess for what we can do to help it comes down to buying games legally, even if that means butchering out wallets with third part shipping costs, and helping out kickstarters and translation projects when they launch.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting report, but not too surprising to see a niche market drop in terms of value, it's simply not big enough to be stable. At the very least it wasn't a massive drop. I think it can definitely recover, especially with more and more Japanese eroge being licensed.

20 minutes ago, Stormwolf said:

46% male and 54% female

Wtf?

In the dating simulation category is makes sense since the Otome market is rather popular and keeps growing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Dergonu said:

:wafuu:

I was expecting something along those lines but it still sucks to hear it. Piracy really is killing this industry.

Yeah if more and more games kept on flowing into the western market, I would at least hope that it would help the industry somewhat. On that note, we have seen a decent amount of in house translations or simultaneous English / Japanese releases recently. I hope that this trend will continue.

 

I guess for what we can do to help it comes down to buying games legally, even if that means butchering out wallets with third part shipping costs, and helping out kickstarters and translation projects when they launch.

Yano's report mentioned "English love drama apps account for more than 10% of (Voltage Inc.'s) revenue"(英語版恋愛ドラマアプリが売上構成比1割超). Well I am not sure whether the 売上 should be translated as downloads or in-game purchase, I just assume it is revenue:) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm going to guess "dating simulation" in this context just means an all ages VN with no sex scenes where the end goal is to get into girl/boy's route, and the amount of games for females where you date pretty boys is off the charts (I'm also curious to know if all ages BL games were included in this), whereas for males the preference is a dating experience with sex scenes, which is included in the adult game category and not the dating simulation one. This easily explains the huge gender ratio difference between the two categories.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

I was expecting something along those lines but it still sucks to hear it. Piracy really is killing this industry.

Piracy is a problem, yes, but a far bigger problem is that the industry overexpanded and dropped significantly in quality the past few years.  Like the anime industry, I expect we'll see a period of contraction as lesser companies and fringe studios go out of business.  When the market stabilizes, more new studios will appear, there'll be more new and interesting games, and the industry will grow again (until the next bust cycle).

Remember, 2015 averaged 75-100 mid to major releases a month, with that many or more little doujin releases added on.  That's still a LOT of games.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

:wafuu:

I was expecting something along those lines but it still sucks to hear it. Piracy really is killing this industry.

Yeah if more and more games kept on flowing into the western market, I would at least hope that it would help the industry somewhat. On that note, we have seen a decent amount of in house translations or simultaneous English / Japanese releases recently. I hope that this trend will continue.

 

I guess for what we can do to help it comes down to buying games legally, even if that means butchering out wallets with third part shipping costs, and helping out kickstarters and translation projects when they launch.

 

That still wont help the fact the quality of writing is deteriorating as the time goes on. There is way too much moe crap flooding the market, dampening out the VN with actual good writing.

 

TBH I find myself currently having nothing decent to read. Finding a VN that has at least equal amount of male and female characters of decent quality is proving to be impossible lately. Same with anime actually, the only decent thing that got my attention is the Monster and that is pretty aged already.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:

Didn't know that most of the otome games are dating simulation(?) Thought they were just "moege" with men xD 

Or then I just understand the whole dating simulation in a different way.

I think there is difference between Japanese and Westerners when it comes to perception of VNs. Japanese sees VNs like ToHeart as a form of ADVs with love/adult content; this form has been replaced by Kirikiri and other engines. Westerners' concept of VNs includes a lot of games including love/sex content free Snatcher and Policenauts.

I just checked my downloaded reports and found a report named "Present and Future of Korean Comics Industry Focusing on Copyright Issues". I was surprised to figure out that Koreans use cartoons to refer to comics. But it is not uncommon for Chinese to call anime manga and call manga anime:)

Maybe it's just me.

But well, the 恋愛ゲーム in original text is renai game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Nightmare799 said:

 

That still wont help the fact the quality of writing is deteriorating as the time goes on. There is way too much moe crap flooding the market, dampening out the VN with actual good writing.

 

TBH I find myself currently having nothing decent to read. Finding a VN that has at least equal amount of male and female characters of decent quality is proving to be impossible lately. Same with anime actually, the only decent thing that got my attention is the Monster and that is pretty aged already.

Well of course, but there really isn't much we can do to make the people who creates the VN write better stuff :makina:...

 

3 minutes ago, Toranth said:

Piracy is a problem, yes, but a far bigger problem is that the industry overexpanded and dropped significantly in quality the past few years.  Like the anime industry, I expect we'll see a period of contraction as lesser companies and fringe studios go out of business.  When the market stabilizes, more new studios will appear, there'll be more new and interesting games, and the industry will grow again (until the next bust cycle).

Remember, 2015 averaged 75-100 mid to major releases a month, with that many or more little doujin releases added on.  That's still a LOT of games.

This is true, yes. But we need to remember that even if a bunch of big releases comes out and no one actually pays for them, the companies will be reluctant to release more in the future. Piracy is a huge issue, because if we just download the game illegaly and then go "oh yea it was good" and move on, the people who made the game gains nothing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Nightmare799 said:

That still wont help the fact the quality of writing is deteriorating as the time goes on. There is way too much moe crap flooding the market, dampening out the VN with actual good writing.

Moe is what keeps the market alive pls. Moe is also awesome, not Japan's fault you don't like it :Teeku: 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This doesn't surprise me at all. The VN industry has become dominated by generic moege VNs. If you look at the top selling manga of 2015 in Japan http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2015-05-31/top-selling-manga-in-japan-by-series-2015/.88770 you'll notice something. There are VERY FEW moe type mangas in it. I'm sure even in Japan many are getting sick of the typical school setting harems. They need to try create more original and interesting settings and stories. You'll also notice many of the series in the top selling mangas are shounens which feature lots of action and characters that get stronger throughout the series. There aren't too many VNs that do this. If the VN industry doesn't stop making copy paste moege VNs they will slowly die out. They need a more balanced cast of characters. Not 1 or 2 male characters and a million female characters.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Kiriririri said:

Moe is what keeps the market alive pls. Moe is also awesome, not Japan's fault you don't like it :Teeku: 

I do not find moe that bad of a genre itself, but VN business is absolute disaster lately for people like who prefer intelligent reads (and yes that includes even eroge) to moe.

 

6 hours ago, Codesterz said:

This doesn't surprise me at all. The VN industry has become dominated by generic moege VNs. If you look at the top selling manga of 2015 in Japan http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2015-05-31/top-selling-manga-in-japan-by-series-2015/.88770 you'll notice something. There are VERY FEW moe type mangas in it. I'm sure even in Japan many are getting sick of the typical school setting harems. They need to try create more original and interesting settings and stories. You'll also notice many of the series in the top selling mangas are shounens which feature lots of action and characters that get stronger throughout the series. There aren't too many VNs that do this. If the VN industry doesn't stop making copy paste moege VNs they will slowly die out. They need a more balanced cast of characters. Not 1 or 2 male characters and a million female characters.

You said pretty much all there is to it, well done.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Too much oversaturation, too much moege many crap games released. They're currently choking on their own shit, as expected. A lot of studios will fall, things will plummet down one after another; after that there's going to be a lot more space on the market and things will begin to stabilize again. Typical economic circle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Nightmare799 said:

Maybe those games would sell better if stuff like devil on the G-string, fate/stay night, or fruit of grisaia kept coming out, and if they gave those titles official support in west along with purchase platform.

I agree, the problem is that many of the ones coming out are not very good..they need to realize that they need to put a foot down and start making better products or else it will never improve

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, DarkZedge said:

I agree, the problem is that many of the ones coming out are not very good..they need to realize that they need to put a foot down and start making better products or else it will never improve

Japanese entertainment business? Learning? Improving?

Those sentences...they...uh, you know...they do not go very well together. I mean, take a look at what happened to Dynasty warriors series and most of their PC releases. When they are finally willing to take risks, they usually fail to deliver the effort necessary, which leads to making excuses why their releases, be it games anime or VN's  are not getting good sales such as piracy, when in fact mostly their laziness and lack of presentation, along with their mentality that I can only comprehend as hatred towards west, are at play for their failures.

 

I mean, I am enthusiastic about Japanese technological advancements and their achievements and integrity as nation, but the heads of their entertainment enterprises are among some of the most despicable people I can think of, not that it is any different in west mind you, but heck, at least we try sometimes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Narcosis said:

Too much oversaturation, too much moege many crap games released. They're currently choking on their own shit, as expected. A lot of studios will fall, things will plummet down one after another; after that there's going to be a lot more space on the market and things will begin to stabilize again. Typical economic circle.

Our lord and savior Netorare will save us from the terror that is MOEBLOB.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm, maybe I'll just have to win the lottery and start forcing all the companies with my newfound wealth to make more yuri games! That would surely cause world peace make the market stabilize, because lets face it; everyone loves yuri, so everyone will buy the games!

It's a flawless plan! :pyaa:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...