Tokyo Game Show Confirms 2006 Dates, Plans

Author: by Simon Carless, Brandon Sheffield

The official website for the Tokyo Game Show, the leading trade and consumer game show held yearly in Japan, has announced that this year's TGS will be held from September 22nd to the 24th at the Makuhari Messe convention center in the Chiba prefecture. As in previous years, September 22nd will be the business-only day at TGS, with general admission to the public being permitted on September 23rd and 24th. This year's TGS is likely to be particularly interesting, since playable titles from all three next-generation consoles will certainly be present, whether all three have yet launched or not. After the success of last year's TGS, which had 131 exhibitors and 176,056 attendees, including 36,068 professionals in attendance on day 1, 67,791 showgoers on day 2, and 72,197 on day 3, the organizers have announced that they hope to reach the 140 exhibitor mark for the 2006 TGS. They will particularly be enlarging the mobile game-related portion of the show, which was apparently popular in 2005. In addition, the TGS business day will be expanded, with further talks and TGS forums, following last year's Satoru Iwata keynote which introduced the Nintendo Revolution controller. TGS' organizers are hoping to have more international exhibitors, following around 30 such exhibitors in 2005, and are also hoping that more international journalists will attend the event. Though the English part of the Tokyo Game Show website has not yet updated, more information will be available on the official TGS site in the near future.