Report from the Tokyo Game Show

I have been in Tokyo, Japan all week and was able to attend the Tokyo Game Show today. This is the first time I have ever attended the show and I am glad I didn't make the trip just for this show. Don't get me wrong, it was good to be there, it just wasn't very large. I was glad I had very productive meetings earlier in the week to justify the trip.

I got to the exhibit hall a little after the show opened and so the floor was not too crowded. The first booth I saw was from Electronic Arts (EA) and was for Battlefield 4. I am a big fan of Battlefield 3 and am looking forward to the next version. There was a lot of information about the new Frostbite 3 engine and it looks to have some great improvements that are especially nice for online play.

My next stop was the Microsoft booth where I was able to play with the XBox One. There were a number of games available which should put to rest any fears XBox fans have about not having a lot of game titles. I'm not sure how much of what I saw will be available at launch but they seemed in a playable enough state that if they aren't available on day one, they will be shortly after.

It was only fair that my next stop was at Sony's PlayStation booth. Microsoft's booth was a ghost town compared to Sony's booth. There were a number of lines, each containing an insane number of people wanting to play the PlayStation 4. There was also a healthy mix of Vita and PlayStation 3 games to sample. In all fairness to Microsoft, the XBox is not nearly as popular in Japan as it is in the United States. For every XBox 360 sold last week in Japan, there were 70 PS3's sold.

I enjoy a limited time spent at tradeshows in the United States and also enjoyed the day at the Tokyo Game Show. The one big difference between the two countries is the number of scantily-clad "booth babes" in Japan. It was not uncommon to see a crew of bikini models running around the exhibit hall. One unusually small booth had an equally unusual large number of models in their booth. I have no idea what game they made even though I passed that booth a number of times. I could probably pass it a dozen more and still wouldn't have any idea what they do.