Niko Partners, the analytics firm covering the video game industry in Asia and MENA markets, published its latest weekly report, which points to a potential source of problems for the Japanese video game market. As geopolitical tensions between Japan and China continue to rise, China might be inclined to take retaliatory actions, like starting to deny approval of Japanese games.
According to Niko Partners, "Japan is the single largest source of import game approvals to China, accounting for roughly 30% of all licensed foreign titles over the past two years." We know that China is a massive market that any publisher would want to be able to crack, since that would be millions of potential players.
Though the firm clarifies that there's been no indication China would stop approving games from Japan, it's definitely a possibility, and would be a huge blow to Japanese developers and publishers who have much of their business tied to Chinese players.
Issues between the two nations are currently rising due to comments from Japan's Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, who recently suggested, per Bloomberg, that Japan could interfere with China attempting to reunify Taiwan.
China has now called on Japan to retract the comments, and has already begun taking actions such as having flights cancelled and travel advisories issued on travel to Japan, suspending the importing of Japanese seafood, and pausing the approval of Japanese films.
With film approvals already getting paused, it's not a huge leap to imagine video games are next. We'll see how the rest of it continues to unfold, but if their relationship continues to decline, then it'll likely be quite some time before we see the Nintendo Switch 2 make it over to China.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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