According to a survey published some time ago by Shibuya109 Entertainment, but now recovered by the Western press, it seems that those belonging to the Generation Z in Japan they are well not very interested to traditional consoles and in particular to PS5 and Xbox Serieswith the vast majority of these engaged daily on mobile games.
“Gen Z” means those born between 1995 and 2010, therefore a rather young but not very young audience, which elsewhere constitutes an important part of the standard console user, but evidently not in Japan.
According to the survey conducted by Shibuya109 and relating to 2023, 80% of members of Generation Z, who are currently between 15 and 24 years old, normally play video games, with 44.9% play it every day and who spends an average of 100 minutes a day on these.
Nintendo Switch and PC well above PlayStation and Xbox
It is therefore a decidedly active audience on the gaming front, except that it does not seem to be interested in traditional “high end” and domestic consoles, so to speak: essentially, PlayStation and Xbox are not among the platforms of preference, with only Nintendo Switch to appear with a certain consistency, followed by PC, but mobile platforms dominate everything.
here are the results of the survey on which platform is used most for gaming by Generation Z in Japan:
- Mobile 94.7%
- Nintendo Switch 38.5%
- PC 33.2%
- Tablets (26.5%)
- SD (12.2%)
These are not percentages calculated on a whole, i.e. their sum does not equal 100%, as they derive from possible multiple choices offered to users.
From what emerges, it seems that also Nintendo DS, which was already practically retired in 2023, is more popular than PS5 and Xbox Series According to some commentators, this can also be explained by the greater expense that these consoles require, but this would not explain the presence of Nintendo Switch in such a high position compared to other consoles.
In any case, even those who are considered “hardcore gamers” among those who took part in the survey, or at least traditional gamers, seem focus more on PC and Nintendo Switch compared to other platforms. It also seems that, for members of Generation Z in Japan, free-to-play games and smaller-scale titles are significantly more popular than triple-A console classics.
