Japan has 17.2 million pachinko players

On the contrary, average play time per year and annual average amount spent recorded the lowest during the last ten years as follows; average play time per year was 20.4 times and annual average amount spent was us$ 873,859. This trend made the six consecutive years down stream of total market size to us$ 245.4 billion in this year.

This reveals that shrinking trend of the total market size has not been stopped yet for the decrease of amount spent per player as well as the consumption restraint caused by the economy’s down trend, notwithstanding the recovery trend shown in the players number as a result of expansion of utilization and spread of low denomination machines.

Chief Researcher Naoya Yanagida stated: “The aggressive introduction of low denomination machines like us$ 0.05 or us$ 0.01 per ball showed the effect to increase number of players but these measures’ impact seems to be over.” He also forecasted that entire industry will further experience the severe conditions and that there is a sign of stimulation of new demand like the favorable performance seen on the entertainment equipment under the collaboration with animation and/or major copyright.

Total size of market for spare time industry recorded us$ 811.3 billion (4.3% down from the previous year). This is the first record less than us$ 815.6 million after the last time of 1989. This seems to be influenced by the stagnation of economy as well as the new type influenza’ s contagion. Accordingly, the Paper concluded that consumer’s spending cut trend is still strong and that the existing market’s frustration is growing.