The Japanese PC games market has seen considerable growth within the last three years.

That's according to Katan Games' Dr Serkan Toto, who – citing research from Kadokawa ASCII – reports that the sector has "roughly doubled" since 2018, bringing in ¥131.3 billion ($896 million) during 2021. Overall, Japan's games market made ¥2 trillion ($13.7 billion) that year, meaning that PC games make up around 6.5 per cent of the country's market as a whole.

Furthermore, 16 million people in Japan were playing PC games during 2021, 28.8 per cent of the country's total 55.4 million total gaming population. 4.5 million of that 16 million slice of the population exclusively play PC games, too, a 100 per cent increase from the 2.2. million people who only played on PC in 2015.

In 2018, there were around 11 million people who identified as PC gamers, representing a 45 per cent increase by 2021. Toto also notes that in 2015, there were only 45 million gamers in Japan, meaning that PC gamers have increased a higher rate than the 22 per cent at which the overall gaming population has grown.

"Japan actually has a rich history of early PC games that started on home-grown computers around the early 1980s," Toto wrote.

"It is correct that soon after, consoles and later smartphones took over, but PC gaming was really never dead in Japan and its niche character has always been a bit exaggerated in my view."