The Japanese gaming scene has always been particularly different from the rest of the world, and it seems to hold true even for a fighting game like the King Of Fighters series.
With the KOFXIV World Championship coming this weekend, the timing could've never been better to release the big data for the Japanese edition of The King Of Fighters Interest Survey [2016 Ver].
Given that The MadMan's Cafe helped out in realizing the Japanese edition, we've been given the green light on releasing the stats. Check them out below. What's more, we've got them in Japanese for the native fans as well. They can be downloaded in a zipped batch here.
Note: For users that want to dive into the raw unsorted data, they're available for various countries at the KOF Interest Survey repository
Japan Stats for The King Of Fighters Interest Survey [2016 Ver]
Starting off, the age survey shows some significant difference in the JP scene. The 25-34 age group is about the same in both the JA and EN surveys, but things take a dive when it comes to the younger crowd.
Players at age 15-24 account for only 15.5% in Japan which is merely half of the EN survey (30.4%). On the flip-side, players aged 35+ makes up for 26.7% in Japan, whereas they're only 11.4% in the EN results.
Whether it's because of Japan's declining birthrate or lack of appeal the KOF franchise has to the younger crowd (we're betting on the latter), fans in the Japanese survey seem to be generally older than the English survey.
Competitive play certainly doesn't seem to be a high interest in the Japanese survey.
71.5% associate themselves as a casual player, which is a lot more than the EN survey (47.7%).
Likewise, 74.2% said they've never been to any fighting game tournaments, whereas with the English survey 42.9% said that they're tournament virgins.
Reflex Tester
