Indie video games developed on modest budgets by individuals and small teams are gaining traction in Japan for their innovative ideas and variety often absent from major studio titles. Advances in development tools have helped lower barriers to entry, spurring a surge in creators and driving rapid market growth. Competition has intensified, however, and only a handful of titles achieve commercial success. The Tokyo Game Show 2025 took place in September at the Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba. A short walk from the towering booths of major publishers such as Square Enix and Sega was the Indie Game Area, a cluster of compact stands outfitted with little more than personal computers and monitors.

Japan's gaming industry moves to improve accessibility A player uses eye movement to play a game during the Tokyo Game Show held in the city of Chiba in September. The Japanese gaming industry is working to improve video game accessibility by developing equipment and systems that allow people with disabilities affecting their hands to play by using other parts of their body, such as their cheeks, feet and eyes. There were people playing games without using their hands at an area dedicated to accessibility set up for the first time at the Tokyo Game Show in the city of Chiba in September. One of items on display was a special gaming controller system developed mainly by Tokyo-based Technotools for Nintendo's Nintendo Switch game console. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

The only person in kimono at a recent government meeting on flying cars was Kotaro Chiba, a former online-game executive turned financier of a very specific kind. For Chiba, 44, who wears kimono on special occasions to show his pride in Japanese culture, is gathering money for what he calls the Drone Fund. It invests in unmanned vehicles to survey buildings, make deliveries and take aerial photos for tourist boards; hover scooters; and a pilotless cargo craft that's seeking to make it all the way from Japan to Silicon Valley in one go. Chiba is at the forefront of an industry that's only years away from changing our lives. In five to 10 years, the skies could be alive with drones delivering goods, according to McKinsey & Co.

The next generation farmhand in Japan's aging rural heartland may be a drone. For several months, developers and farmers in northeast Japan have been testing a new drone that can hover above paddy fields and perform backbreaking tasks in a fraction of the time it takes for elderly farmers. "This is unprecedented high technology," said Isamu Sakakibara, a 69-year-old rice farmer in the Tome area, a region that has supplied rice to Tokyo since the 17th century. Developers of the new agricultural drone say it offers high-tech relief for rural communities facing a shortage of labor as young people leave for the cities. "As we face a shortage of next-generation farmers, it's our mission to come up with new ideas to raise productivity and farmers' income through the introduction of cutting-edge technologies such as drones," said Mr. Sakakibara, who is also the head of JA Miyagi Tome, the local agricultural cooperative. The drone can apply pesticides and fertilizer to a rice field in about 15 minutes – a job that takes more than an hour by hand and requires farmers to lug around heavy tanks.

DeNA Co., best known as a mobile video game maker, said on Thursday it will launch a driverless bus service at a park in Chiba Prefecture from next month. The Tokyo-based firm said it has partnered with EasyMile S.A., a French startup that manufactures self-driving buses. There are not many firms that can provide "completely driverless vehicles that can be used for actual services," said Hiroshi Nakajima, who heads DeNA's automotive business, explaining why his company chose to partner with EasyMile. DeNA's new service will employ the company's EZ10 bus, an electric vehicle that can accommodate 12 people. The limited-time service, dubbed Robot Shuttle, will begin on a yet-to-be-determined date in August inside the 21,000 sq.-meter Toyosuna Park in Chiba's Makuhari district, adjacent to vast Aeon shopping complex.

Domestic companies are coming up with a series of new services that leverage the latest in drone technology. MicroAd Inc., a Tokyo-based online advertising company, has unveiled a service called Sky Magic to produce sound-and-light extravaganzas. Drones illuminated with LED lights can project logos, words, shapes and pictures in spaces above large-scale events. At its roll-out event in Chiba in April, five drones flew in a formation depicting an inverted image of Mt. Fuji as a live shamisen performance was held in front of an audience of some 1,300.

CHIBA – The government and companies started a trial of a drone home delivery service in Chiba Prefecture on Monday, with drones loaded with packages flying between condominiums, commercial facilities and adjacent parks. The joint project involving the central government, the city of Chiba, research institutions and companies including e-commerce giant Rakuten Inc. is the first drone delivery trial in an urban area. The city of Chiba has been designated as a special deregulation zone to conduct the trial. In the next stage of the trial, drones will pick up packages from a warehouse located beside Tokyo Bay and deliver them to Chiba's Mihama Ward, about 10 km away. The city aims to start the drone home delivery service by 2020, when Tokyo will host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and plans to ask real estate developers scheduled to construct high-rise condominiums in Mihama to set up landing areas for the craft on each unit's balcony.