Japan Has 3 Million Fewer PC Gamers Than a Decade Ago. Or Does It?

Here’s a headline that sounds like a full-blown crisis: according to a preview of the new Famitsu Game Hakusho 2025 report, Japan has lost roughly 3 million PC gamers over the last decade. In a world where Steam is supposedly conquering the globe, it sounds like the PC Master Race is getting absolutely slaughtered in the land of the rising sun.

But like most things that sound too dramatic to be true, the reality is a lot more complicated. This isn't a story about PC gaming dying; it's a story about what "PC gaming" actually means and how the smartphone completely changed the game.

Monster Hunter Wilds

The Mobile Tsunami

Let’s dig into the numbers. The report states that Japan's PC gamer population fell from 17.49 million in 2015 to 14.52 million in 2024. During that same period, the number of mobile gamers exploded from 14.11 million to a colossal 42.77 million. It doesn't take a genius to see where those PC players went.

The key is in the fine print. As many have pointed out, these studies have historically lumped browser-based gaming into the "PC gaming" category. Back in the early 2010s, browser MMOs and gacha games were huge in Japan. When smartphones became ubiquitous, that entire market migrated. Those millions of people didn't stop gaming; they just stopped doing it in a web browser and started doing it on an app. The smartphone didn't just compete with PC gaming; it cannibalized a huge chunk of what was once considered its territory.

Your Rig Costs a Fortune

It doesn't help that building or buying a gaming PC in Japan has become ridiculously expensive. Prices for pre-built desktops have reportedly jumped 40% in the last six years, with some components more than tripling in price over the same period. When you can get a modern console for a fraction of the price, and your phone already plays the gacha games you're addicted to, the argument for a pricey desktop rig gets a lot weaker. PC shipments in the country have been declining for three consecutive years, hitting a 16-year low in 2023.

The Steam-Powered Asterisk

So is PC gaming actually doomed in Japan? Not at all. This is the great paradox in the data. While the overall number of "PC gamers" is down because the browser-based crowd left, conventional, application-based gaming via platforms like Steam has grown substantially. This is why you see companies like Capcom constantly talking up how well their PC ports are selling in Japan. The audience is smaller, but they're the dedicated, core gamers who are actually buying big-budget titles, with revenue for traditional PC games reportedly almost equal to that of consoles.

So, no, PC gaming isn't dying in Japan. It has simply transformed. The casual audience that once played on browsers has moved on to the convenience of mobile. What’s left is a smaller, but arguably more dedicated and profitable, base of players who are keeping the platform very much alive. The pie is smaller, but the slice is richer.