On December 11, 2000, Japanese readers opening a new website called GAME Watch found themselves looking at something that reflected both the history of video game journalism and the direction in which that journalism was beginning to move.
The publication belonged to Impress, a company already experienced in rapidly updated internet journalism through properties such as INTERNET Watch and PC Watch. GAME Watch was not created in isolation. Its roots stretched directly into PC Watch, where Impress had previously placed much of its game-related reporting. By the end of 2000, however, games had become too important, too varied, and in some cases too institutionally separated from the personal computer industry to remain merely one subject within a broader technology publication.
The timing could hardly have been more significant. Sony had released the PlayStation 2 in Japan earlier that year. Sega’s Dreamcast was still on the market. Nintendo was preparing the GameCube, while Microsoft was moving toward its first Xbox. Handheld systems such as the Game Boy Color and WonderSwan Color competed for players, arcade games remained an important part of Japanese gaming culture, and PC gaming occupied a substantial corner of the market.
Into that environment came GAME Watch, an internet publication designed to treat the entire game industry as worthy of dedicated daily reporting.
The Road from PC Watch
Before GAME Watch existed as its own publication, game coverage could be found within PC Watch. That arrangement made sense during the formative years of Impress’s online journalism, when the boundaries separating computers, digital electronics, internet services, and electronic entertainment were often less rigid.
Eventually those boundaries began creating problems.
An Impress retrospective later explained that the PlayStation 2 helped convince the company that games needed their own publication. When journalists associated with a PC-oriented web outlet found that they could not necessarily gain access to events intended for specialist game media, the distinction between covering games and actually being recognized as game press became increasingly important. The solution was not simply to increase the number of game stories appearing on PC Watch. Impress began planning a publication dedicated to games themselves.
That story reveals something important about the development of online game journalism around the turn of the century. The web had already demonstrated that news could be published quickly, but digital outlets were still establishing their place beside older specialist magazines. A website might cover games extensively and still encounter an industry built around established definitions of what constituted game media.
GAME Watch gave Impress a clear answer. It would become a specialist game publication in its own right.
GAME Watch Launches
Four days before its official opening, INTERNET Watch announced that GAME Watch would begin operating at noon on December 11, 2000. The notice described a publication covering console games such as those for PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, and Game Boy, alongside PC and arcade gaming.
Readers could expect news about hardware and software, reviews, release schedules, and even downloadable demonstrations of PC games. Updates were planned for weekdays, while articles could also be distributed by email. Access was free.
The announcement also distinguished GAME Watch from established competitors such as Famitsu.com and GameSpot Japan. Impress intended to publish comparatively substantial articles meant to be read carefully, with an early emphasis on an audience somewhat older than the readership associated with some other gaming outlets. PC games were expected to receive significant attention during the publication’s early period.
GAME Watch therefore arrived with a recognizable editorial identity. Speed mattered because the web demanded it, but depth mattered too.
The original operation was small. Material later presented by GAME Watch editor Minoru Funatsu in a Digital Games Research Association Japan lecture described the publication as beginning with only three editors. His presentation placed GAME Watch within the larger rise of web-based game media during the 2000s, when internet publications increasingly joined and competed with the magazine culture that had shaped Japanese video game journalism during the previous two decades.
Tōru Ogawa’s Vision for GAME Watch
On launch day, GAME Watch editor Tōru Ogawa published a greeting explaining what the new site intended to become.
His definition of gaming was deliberately broad. GAME Watch would cover home consoles such as PlayStation 2, PlayStation, Dreamcast, and Nintendo 64, but it would not stop there. PC games, handheld systems including Game Boy and WonderSwan, arcade games, prize products, hardware, software, technology, and other subjects connected to electronic entertainment all fell within its territory.
Ogawa was writing at a moment when technological categories seemed to be converging. Hardware was becoming smaller and less expensive, while software, services, communications, and entertainment increasingly overlapped. Games could no longer be understood only as pieces of software placed into isolated machines. They existed within a larger technological culture that was changing rapidly.
That outlook gave GAME Watch room to grow.
The publication did not have to define gaming according to a single console manufacturer, platform, or genre. Its subject was the broader world surrounding electronic games.
Ogawa also looked toward 2001, when Nintendo’s GameCube and Microsoft’s Xbox were preparing to enter a market already transformed by PlayStation 2. GAME Watch had been founded almost exactly when a new hardware generation was taking shape, giving the publication an opportunity to document that transformation as it happened.
Recording a Rapidly Changing Game Industry
Six years later, GAME Watch looked back at how dramatically its subject had changed.
Its earliest archives contained a world of WonderSwan Color, Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Game Boy hardware, arcade games, and a Microsoft that had not yet released the original Xbox. By 2006 the landscape included Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo DS, PSP, and Wii, while portable gaming, online connectivity, downloadable content, and new forms of digital entertainment were reshaping assumptions about what a game machine could be.
That speed of change made a continually updated web publication particularly useful.
Traditional gaming magazines remained important, but an internet outlet did not have to wait for the next issue to report a hardware announcement, event, release date, interview, or industry development. GAME Watch could follow the industry on something much closer to its own schedule.
The site’s surviving archives consequently became more than a record of GAME Watch itself. They became a chronological record of the Japanese game business during a period of extraordinary transformation.
A reader moving through its early pages can encounter companies and machines while they were still current concerns rather than subjects of nostalgia. New consoles appear as anticipated products instead of collectibles. Online gaming emerges as a developing market rather than an established assumption. Technologies that later disappeared sit beside those that would influence the next twenty years.
Becoming Part of the Impress Watch Network
GAME Watch also evolved within the changing structure of Impress.
In 2005, Impress announced a corporate reorganization that transferred its internet news operations into a newly established company called Impress Watch Corporation. The move was intended to strengthen the group’s digital media business at a time when the combined Impress Watch properties were already drawing enormous online audiences. GAME Watch became part of that reorganized operation while retaining its individual identity as a specialist publication.
The corporate arrangement changed again in 2014. Impress Japan, Impress Watch, Impress Business Media, and Impress Communications were consolidated, with the resulting company operating under the Impress name. GAME Watch continued through the transition, illustrating how the editorial brands within the Watch network could outlast changes in the corporate structure around them.
By then, GAME Watch had already survived several generations of consoles and an equally dramatic transformation of the internet itself.
From the Desktop Web to the Smartphone Age
The GAME Watch launched in December 2000 belonged to an internet in which readers commonly arrived at a publication’s front page and worked their way through the day’s stories.
That behavior changed as smartphones and social media became central to online publishing.
In 2016, Impress explained the reasoning behind a major redesign of the Watch network. Readers were increasingly reaching individual stories through social networks, aggregation services, and other outside links rather than beginning every visit on a site’s homepage. Publications therefore needed pages optimized for smartphones and a design that allowed users to move easily from one article to another.
The change was more significant than a new visual layout. It represented the transition between two eras of online journalism.
GAME Watch had been created when a specialized gaming website itself was a relatively new concept. It now had to function in a world where readers carried the web in their pockets and individual articles could circulate independently through social media.
The publication adapted without abandoning the specialist model that had defined it since 2000.
A New Editorial Era
Another transition came in 2019, when Seiji Nakamura became editor-in-chief and GAME Watch entered a new editorial period.
The changing game industry demanded coverage beyond conventional reviews and release announcements. Esports had developed into an international competitive industry. Streaming had altered the relationship between games and audiences. Gaming PCs, accessories, merchandise, events, virtual reality, and entertainment franchises increasingly overlapped.
The publication’s audience was also growing.
In October 2019, Impress reported approximately 17.42 million page views for GAME Watch during a month in which the wider Impress Watch network surpassed 157 million page views on its own sites. Impress specifically identified GAME Watch as one of the properties showing significant growth.
Nearly nineteen years after its creation, the publication was not merely surviving the transformation of digital media. It was reaching one of the largest audiences in its history.
When GAME Watch Became Bigger Than Games
One of the most interesting developments in GAME Watch’s later history came from subjects that began growing around its core game coverage.
Hobby material had existed within GAME Watch, including stories about figures, models, merchandise, toys, and related products. Eventually that section became popular enough to stand on its own.
On June 1, 2020, Impress launched HOBBY Watch. The company explained that hobby coverage had previously existed as a GAME Watch category but had grown into one of its most popular areas, generating requests from readers for a separate publication. Staff members who had worked on the hobby material for GAME Watch helped form the foundation of the new outlet.
What had happened to GAME Watch in 2000 was, in a sense, happening again.
GAME Watch itself had emerged because game reporting had grown beyond its place inside PC Watch. Two decades later, hobby reporting had grown large enough inside GAME Watch to become HOBBY Watch.
The pattern repeated once more with manga.
GAME Watch increasingly covered entertainment subjects surrounding games, including anime, manga, merchandise, and other areas of popular culture. On April 1, 2024, Impress launched MANGA Watch after manga had developed as a category within GAME Watch. The new publication was again led by Seiji Nakamura, linking it directly to the editorial expansion that had taken place inside GAME Watch.
The history forms an unusual publishing family tree. PC Watch helped produce GAME Watch. GAME Watch later helped produce HOBBY Watch and MANGA Watch.
Each expansion reflected the same underlying idea: when a subject developed a sufficiently large audience and editorial identity, Impress could turn that category into a specialized publication of its own.
Inside the Japanese Game Industry
GAME Watch’s longevity also brought it recognition within the industry it covered.
Official records from major Japanese game events show the publication operating alongside some of the country’s best-known gaming media. CEDEC listed GAME Watch among its media partners, while Tokyo Game Show records likewise placed it among Japanese partners such as Famitsu and other major game outlets.
This represented a remarkable reversal from one of the problems that had helped inspire GAME Watch in the first place.
Around the PlayStation 2 era, Impress had realized that a PC-oriented web publication could encounter barriers when trying to report on the console game business. Creating GAME Watch gave its journalists a specialist identity within that industry. Years later, the publication itself was being officially recognized alongside established game media at the industry’s major professional gatherings.
The web outlet that had once needed a dedicated identity to enter that world had become part of its media establishment.
More Than Twenty-Five Years of GAME Watch
GAME Watch entered its twenty-fifth year in a media environment almost unrecognizable from the one in which Tōru Ogawa wrote his launch greeting.
Yet the publication remained substantial. Impress’s current media information reports that GAME Watch recorded about 17.34 million monthly page views and roughly 4.87 million monthly users in July 2026. Its official X account had more than 302,000 followers by September. Impress still describes the publication as specialist media aimed particularly at core game enthusiasts, covering games themselves alongside hardware, peripherals, and developments across the domestic and international game industries.
Those numbers matter, but GAME Watch’s historical importance cannot be measured only through traffic.
Its greater value lies in continuity.
The site began when the Dreamcast was still current, PlayStation 2 was new, Nintendo 64 had not yet been replaced, Microsoft had not released an Xbox, and downloadable console games were far from ordinary. It continued through the GameCube, original Xbox, PlayStation 3, Wii, Nintendo DS, PSP, mobile gaming boom, esports expansion, virtual reality revival, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series hardware, and another generation of Nintendo systems.
Few publications founded specifically for the early web have remained active long enough to document so much of modern video game history.
GAME Watch as a Historical Archive
There is another reason GAME Watch deserves attention from video game historians.
News publications rarely know which ordinary stories will become historically important.
A hardware announcement may look routine when published. A developer interview may concern a game that has not yet proven successful. A new console may be discussed without knowing whether it will dominate its generation or disappear within a few years. Technologies appear before anyone knows which ones will survive.
That uncertainty is precisely what makes contemporary journalism valuable later.
GAME Watch’s archives preserve games before history decided what was important about them. Its early reporting captures the expectations surrounding hardware, companies, software, technology, and industry events as people experienced them at the time. Rather than reconstructing those moments entirely through later memories, historians can return to journalism produced while the events were still unfolding.
GAME Watch therefore occupies two places in video game history.
It is a publication with its own history, born from the expansion of Impress’s early web journalism and the growing independence of games as a subject worthy of specialist online reporting.
It is also a witness.
Since December 11, 2000, GAME Watch has watched the video game industry change generation after generation, recording that history one news story at a time.
Sources & Further Reading
Ogawa, Tōru. “創刊のごあいさつ” [Greeting on the Launch]. GAME Watch. December 11, 2000. https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20001211/soukan.htm
INTERNET Watch. “インプレス、ゲーム情報サイト『GAME Watch』11日よりスタート” [Impress to Launch Game Information Site “GAME Watch” on the 11th]. December 7, 2000. https://internet.watch.impress.co.jp/www/article/2000/1207/game.htm
GAME Watch. “2000年記事一覧” [2000 News Archive]. 2000. https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/index2000.html
GAME Watch. “2000年12月記事一覧” [December 2000 Article Archive]. December 2000. https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/backno/top/index200012.html
Impress Watch. “Impress Watch 10周年記念特別企画: 10年の歩み” [Impress Watch Tenth Anniversary: Ten-Year Chronicle]. 2006. https://www.watch.impress.co.jp/10th/chronicle/index.htm
Impress Watch. “GAME Watch誕生” [Behind the Creation of GAME Watch]. January 24, 2007. https://www.watch.impress.co.jp/10th/fromeditors/070124/index.htm
Impress Watch. “ゲームはこれからどうなるのか? 『GAME Watch』これまでの6年、これからの10年” [What Will Become of Games? GAME Watch’s First Six Years and the Next Ten]. November 28, 2006. https://www.watch.impress.co.jp/10th/fromeditors/061128/index.htm
Funatsu, Minoru. “2000年代編・ウェブメディアの登場と拡散” [The 2000s: The Emergence and Expansion of Web Media]. Digital Games Research Association Japan, 2010. https://digrajapan.org/?wpdmpro=2000%E5%B9%B4%E4%BB%A3%E7%B7%A8%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A6%E3%82%A7%E3%83%96%E3%83%A1%E3%83%87%E3%82%A3%E3%82%A2%E3%81%AE%E7%99%BB%E5%A0%B4%E3%81%A8%E6%8B%A1%E6%95%A3
Digital Games Research Association Japan. “メディアの変遷とゲームジャーナリズムの変化” [Changes in Media and Game Journalism]. 2010. https://digrajapan.org/?p=624
Digital Games Research Association Japan. “研究資料ダウンロード” [Research Downloads]. https://digrajapan.org/?page_id=279
Impress. “ITニュースサービス事業の強化に伴う子会社再編のお知らせ” [Notice Concerning Subsidiary Reorganization to Strengthen the IT News Service Business]. September 8, 2005. https://www.impress.co.jp/newsrelease_bk/2005/09/it-1.html
Impress. “BB WatchのINTERNET Watchへの統合、およびRobot WatchのGAME Watchへの統合について” [Integration of BB Watch into INTERNET Watch and Robot Watch into GAME Watch]. December 2009. https://www.impress.co.jp/newsrelease_bk/2009/12/-bb-watchinternet-watch-robot-watchgame-watch.html
GAME Watch. “編集部から” [Editorial Information and Contact Page]. https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/info/contact.htm
GAME Watch. “GAME Watch編集部が選ぶ2004年を振り返る” [GAME Watch Editorial Staff Looks Back at 2004]. December 28, 2004. https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20041228/2004.htm
Impress Watch. “経営統合のお知らせ” [Notice of Management Integration]. 2014. https://www.watch.impress.co.jp/member/oshirase.htm
Impress Holdings. “沿革” [Corporate History]. https://www.impressholdings.com/about/history/
Impress Watch. “Impress Watchは今年20周年を迎えます” [Impress Watch Celebrates Its Twentieth Anniversary]. 2016. https://www.watch.impress.co.jp/20th/history.html
Impress. “Impress Watchのサイトデザインをリニューアル” [Impress Watch Site Designs Renewed]. June 1, 2016. https://www.impress.co.jp/newsrelease_bk/2016/06/20160601-02.html
Impress. Impress Media Guide 2016–2017. 2016. https://ad.impress.co.jp/pdf/baitai1701c.pdf
Impress. Consumer Media Guide 2019. 2019. https://ad.impress.co.jp/pdf/baitai1904c.pdf
Impress. “Amazon Alexa向け『Impress Watch』ニュース配信開始” [Impress Watch Begins News Distribution for Amazon Alexa]. November 8, 2017. https://www.impress.co.jp/newsrelease/pdf/20171108-02.pdf
Impress. “Impress Watch月間総ページビューが1億5,700万PVを突破” [Impress Watch Monthly Page Views Exceed 157 Million]. November 26, 2019. https://www.impress.co.jp/newsrelease/2019/11/20191126-01.html
Nakamura, Seiji. “GAME Watch編集部、スタッフ募集のお知らせ” [GAME Watch Editorial Department Staff Recruitment Notice]. GAME Watch, April 15, 2019. https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/common/1180032.html
Nakamura, Seiji. “ホビー総合専門誌『HOBBY Watch』創刊のお知らせ” [Announcement of the Launch of HOBBY Watch]. GAME Watch, May 21, 2020. https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1253015.html
Impress. “ホビー総合専門サイト『HOBBY Watch』を6月1日に創刊” [HOBBY Watch to Launch June 1]. June 1, 2020. https://www.impress.co.jp/newsrelease/pdf/20200601-01.pdf
GAME Watch. “2020年 GAME Watch年間アクセスランキング” [GAME Watch 2020 Annual Access Ranking]. 2020. https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/kikaku/1298142.html
Nakamura, Seiji. “マンガ総合専門誌『MANGA Watch』近日創刊のお知らせ” [Announcement of the Upcoming Launch of MANGA Watch]. GAME Watch, January 15, 2024. https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/common/1560674.html
Impress. “マンガの『今』を伝えるマンガ情報の総合ニュースサイト『MANGA Watch』を4月1日に創刊” [MANGA Watch Launches April 1]. April 1, 2024. https://www.impress.co.jp/newsrelease/pdf/20240401-01.pdf
GAME Watch. “編集部から” [Current Editorial and Contact Information]. https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/common/contact.html
Impress. “GAME Watch.” Impress Media Guide. 2026. https://ad.impress.co.jp/adguide/consumer/gamewatch.html
Korea Creative Content Agency. “Japanese Game Specialist Media: Game Watch.” WelCon. 2024. https://welcon.kocca.kr/mobile/en/usage/553
Nikkei Telecom. “インプレスニュース” [Impress News]. Nikkei Telecom Q&A Navi. https://telecom.nikkei.co.jp/qanavi/reference/media/post_42
Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association. CEDEC 2010 Press Materials. 2010. https://cedec.cesa.or.jp/2010/pdf/press/cedec_100824.pdf
Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association. “Sponsors and Media Partners.” CEDEC 2012. 2012. https://cedec.cesa.or.jp/2012/sponsors/index.html
Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association. CEDEC 2014 Sponsorship and Media Partner Guide. 2014. https://cedec.cesa.or.jp/2014/documents/sponsorship.pdf
Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association. CEDEC 2016 Official Guidebook. 2016. https://cedec.cesa.or.jp/2016/documents/guidebook.pdf
Tokyo Game Show. Tokyo Game Show 2012 Official Report. 2012. https://expo.nikkeibp.co.jp/tgs/2013/exhibition/common/pdf/2012_result.pdf
Tokyo Game Show. Tokyo Game Show 2013 Official Report. 2013. https://expo.nikkeibp.co.jp/tgs/2014/exhibition/common/pdf/2013_report.pdf
Tokyo Game Show. Tokyo Game Show 2020 Media Report. 2020. https://4c281b16296b2ab02a4e0b2e3f75446d.cdnext.stream.ne.jp/tgs/2021/exhibition/common/pdf/22_2020_media_report.pdf
Square Enix. “Adventurer Roundtable No. 6.” WE REMEMBER VANA’DIEL. https://we-are-vanadiel.finalfantasyxi.com/post/?id=256&lang=ja