Following the trend of almost every year, the Tokyo Game Show once again saw an increase of total visitors. This year, the show attracted 271,224 visitors, according to CESA’s count, but I have to tell you that the official figure may be wrong, because the guy counted me twice on day three. You heard it here first, the real number is closer to 271,223.
For real, we were all sitting there in line, waiting for the doors to open. Well, I wasn’t sitting yet, I was just arriving. The traffic counter man asked to see my badge, I showed it to him, and he clicked his counter. Two minutes later, after I’d sat down and pulled out my laptop, the same guy came back and asked to see my badge again, and then clicked his thing.
“You already counted me,” I called to him in Japanese and English. He just sort of went about his business asking for badges and clicking. That guy totally counted me twice, and now the world has some idea like TGS 2016 was some kind of crowded mess with 271, 224 people, but in reality, it was a pleasure cruise with legroom to spare, bringing in a paltry 271,223 people. It’s this kind of misinformation that holds the industry back, so I hope you understand my urgency in telling you the more accurate number.
I know, I know, maybe he missed someone else who should have been counted, right? Or maybe he skipped someone else to make up the difference? Yeah? That could be. But we don’t know for sure if that happened. We do know for sure that I got counted twice, and if there were two Heaths at the Tokyo Game Show, the whole world would fucking remember it.
We have one thing we know for sure, and other things that are only assumptions. You know which the odds favor. It’s therefore a travesty that everyone will walk around the water cooler Monday morning talking about the wrong TGS numbers.
Here’s the breakdown, which I went in and fixed with MS Paint:
I am way too tired to go in and erase that stray green mark though, so I guess I do kinda see where the double-count guy is coming from.
Next year’s Tokyo Game Show will take place from Sept. 21 – 24, and it will once again be in Makuhari Messe, Chiba, Japan. The Tokyo Game Show does not take place in Tokyo.
