[Guest post] What Japan’s gamers can teach the rest of the games industry

This is a press release posted alongside our usual editorial content.

By Berkley Egenes, Chief Marketing & Growth Officer at Xsolla, and Faisal Kazim, Games Commissioner at Dubai Films and Games Commission

Japan has long been shorthand for “console nation.” That shorthand is getting less useful every year.

The country is still home to Nintendo, PlayStation, and some of the most influential console franchises ever made. But the people playing those games are less loyal to a platform than the industry sometimes assumes. They move between mobile, PC, and console. They buy digitally. They go back to older games, and they spend when a title gives them a reason to stay.

This shift matters well beyond Japan, because Japan is not a small market. It remains the world’s third-largest games market by revenue, accounting for around 9% of global spending from a small fraction of the world’s players. In 2024, the domestic market reached ¥2.48 trillion.

But the more interesting lesson is not simply how much Japanese players spend. It’s what a mature gaming market can teach emerging ecosystems about developing talent, supporting companies and creating sustainable industries.

This is particularly relevant to Dubai and the wider MENA region, where the ambition is increasingly moving beyond becoming markets for video games to becoming places where games are created, developed and exported.

The Japanese gamer has stopped playing by the old rules

Research found that spending on “game software, etc.” items surged 2.4 times in July 2026 from the previous year, when only generations with two or more employees were seen. 28% said they were spending more than the year before, the highest share in four years. Digital downloads had overtaken packaged software as the preferred way to buy.

This is not the death of the Japanese console market. It is something more useful: the maturation of the Japanese gamer.

Players now move across platforms, discover video games through communities and continue engaging with titles long after launch. For publishers, this creates commercial opportunities, but for emerging markets there is another lesson: a successful video game industry needs more than consumers.

It needs people who can make great games, companies who can commercialize them, investors who understand the sector, publishers who can take them to market, and communities that connect all of those groups.

A digital-first economy with local habits

For years, Japanese game companies could build enormous businesses on a simple model: sell hardware, sell boxed software, repeat. The economics are now considerably more fluid.

Mobile remains enormous. Japan generated around $11 billion in mobile in-app purchase revenue in 2025, with some of the highest average revenue per paying user anywhere. But PC is no longer a niche. An industry report puts Japan’s PC gaming population at 56.39 million, and globally PC has been the fastest-growing major platform over the past four years, expanding by almost 60% and overtaking home consoles in share.

Japan’s market is becoming more digital, more cross-platform, and more global, even as it keeps some of the strongest local spending habits in the world. For publishers, the lesson is simple: the customer relationship no longer ends at the point of sale. It continues through updates, downloadable content, subscriptions, expansions, catalog sales, communities, and merchandise.

But another relationship matters just as much: the one between the industry and the people who create it.

Tokyo’s next boom may be happening on PC

PC lowers the barriers between Japanese creators and a global audience. A small studio no longer needs a traditional console publishing deal to reach players overseas. Digital storefronts have made distribution more accessible, and Japan’s own PC players have become a serious commercial audience.

The result is a more varied developer landscape: established publishers building PC expertise alongside independents designing for the world from day one. This changes the creative question for a developer in Tokyo. It is no longer “what will players in Japan buy?” It is “what can a creator in Japan make that someone in London, Los Angeles or São Paulo can’t?”

This is a much bigger opportunity.

It is also a question emerging ecosystems should be asking. Dubai doesn’t need to replicate an existing gaming hub. Its opportunity is to create the conditions for local developers to develop their own creative identity while giving them the infrastructure and international connections to reach global audiences.

The next gaming hub cannot be built with money alone

This may be the biggest lesson from emerging video game ecosystems. Funding matters. Incentives matter. But money alone doesn’t create a sustainable video games industry.

Talent, mentorship, and companies who can employ and develop talent are needed. The same goes for accelerators, publishers, investors, and communities. Most importantly, pathways from potential to sustainability.

This is why programmes such as GameForward matter. Launched by Dubai SME in partnership with Dubai Culture, GameForward was built to help Emirati developers turn ideas into commercially viable businesses. Its first cohort supported 16 studios and 25 founders. Three studios received development grants and two secured PlayStation publishing partnerships.

The significance of the programme isn’t simply the funding. A grant can give a developer time to build, but sustainable development requires much more: mentorship, production knowledge, business skills, industry connections, access to publishers, and exposure to international markets.

The stronger model is a full journey: developing talent, supporting ideas, connecting founders with the industry, opening doors to publishers, and helping studios become commercially sustainable.

That is how an ecosystem grows organically.

Talent is everywhere. Opportunity still isn’t.

The video game industry is full of good creative people with ideas. What is often missing is the infrastructure around them.

A talented developer needs somewhere to learn from, access to technology and capital, and relationships with publishers and platforms. Eventually, they need access to global markets.

This is why talent development has to be central to Dubai’s approach to video games.

Dubai now has 495 gaming companies, up 34.5% in two years, and it is targeting around 30,000 gaming jobs and close to $1 billion in annual economic contribution by 2033. Those numbers are ambitious but the more meaningful measure of progress will be what those companies and people go on to create.

Are more local developers entering the industry? Are studios being founded and scaling? Are international companies creating opportunities for local talent? Are developers moving from employment into entrepreneurship? Are games being made in Dubai and reaching outside the region?

Those are the indicators of an ecosystem becoming self-sustaining. Dubai also has a unique advantage: it does not have to build in isolation.

Its position within MENA, Asia, and global markets means it can connect different gaming communities. Japan represents one of the world’s most mature video game cultures, while MENA has a rapidly growing player base and increasingly sophisticated developer ecosystem.

Dubai can sit between those worlds, connecting talent, companies, investment and expertise.

A good game can do more than make money

The industry, and Dubai in particular, has become increasingly interested in “good gaming”: not just video games that succeed commercially but video games that contribute something positive to people’s lives, communities and culture.

This thinking underpins the Good Game Club, supported by the Dubai Films and Games Commission, which brings together voices from video games, business, culture and policy to explore the social, economic and creative impact of interactive entertainment.

The important point is that positive impact and commercial success should not be treated as opposites.

Players do not owe anyone their attention because a video game has a message. They play because the game is good. Good communities, good storytelling, good systems, good characters, and good design are what earn the right to say something meaningful.

But when those things come together, video games can do more than entertain. They can build communities, develop skills, create jobs, tell stories, preserve culture, and help people understand experiences beyond their own. That makes gaming part of the wider creative economy.

For Dubai, this distinction matters. The goal isn’t simply to build another technology sector. Video games sit at the intersection of technology, entertainment, art, culture and commerce. Building the industry can therefore create opportunities across a much wider range of creative and technical disciplines.

Building a sustainable gaming ecosystem from the ground up

Japan offers one lesson: players change faster than industry stereotypes. Its developers offer another: creative talent can become global without losing its local identity. Its digital transformation offers a third: distribution barriers can fall, but sustainable businesses still depend on strong relationships with players and communities.

To grow a video game industry, it’s important to build the conditions in which developers can grow: capital, talent, infrastructure, mentorship, market access, industry connections, and above all, great video games.

The most successful ecosystems aren’t created overnight through incentives alone. They develop organically as talent attracts companies, companies create opportunities, successful studios inspire the next generation, and international connections bring new ideas and markets into the ecosystem.

The next decade of gaming will not be won by whoever builds the biggest studio or spends the most on advertising. It will be won by the places that understand changing player dynamics, give creators room to experiment, build communities around them, and support good ideas long enough for them to become great games.

Japan’s gamers are already showing where the market is going.