Summary of Research Findings

A consumer survey was conducted from February to March 2024 to 20,000 men and women between their ages 15 and 44 living in Japan.
Of these people, 2,098 were assumed as “otaku” for this consumer survey after they answered “Apply” or “Somewhat apply” to the question “Do you think of yourself as otaku, or have you ever been told by someone that you are an otaku?”, and responded of having hobby on either of the eight genres (*), as well as spent 10,000 yen or more for either of the eight genres within the past year (Feb 2023 to Jan 2024). Rest of the people who did not apply to the above were defined as “non-otaku” in this survey.

First, when asked about having heard of major metaverse platforms like “Fortnite” and “VRchat”, 52.0% of otaku people knew while non-otaku remained at 31.3%. The awareness rate of metaverse platforms was higher in otaku than non-otaku by around 20 points. Though this was only from the questionnaire result, it can be said that otaku has affinity with metaverse services.

*) The eight genres are those expected to be replaced by the metaverse: 1) Anime, manga, light novels, 2) console games, 3) social games, 4) theme parks, 5) VTubers, 6) 2.5 dimensional musicals, 7) Cosplay, and 8) collecting figures.

Noteworthy Topics

Metaverse Services for Otaku Has 195.9 Billion Yen of Market Potential

To 2,098 otaku people in this research, we asked each of the amount spent on event admission fee/ticket fee for the performances, expenses to buy gaming software, charges in social game, costume expense for cosplay, expense to buy figures, etc. (not including the expenses for buying products at event) within the past year (Feb 2023 to Jan 2024) regarding the eight hobby genres. Then, from the total spending amount responded, we calculated the annual average spending per person for each expense and multiplied them with estimated number of persons thereby to find the estimated market sizes for each genre. For instance, otaku people with the hobby of “anime, manga, light novels” spent 35.2 billion yen on admission fee/ticket fee.

Furthermore, for each of estimated market sizes, we set the monetization methods considered to have high affinity in metaverse services and categorized them into Event admission fee, Service fee (fee for using virtual world), and Avatar sales. As Service fee (fee for using virtual world) was estimated at 70.9 billion yen, Event admission fee at 98.0 billion yen, and Avatar sales at 27.0 billion yen, the potential market size for metaverse services for otaku was estimated at 195.9 billion yen.

The above findings indicated that the metaverse service market targeting otaku was of a certain size and that the services for otaku could be expected as a foothold to spread the metaverse.   

Research Outline