Someone who knows what he's talking about (sorry, but I am not free to say who) told me that video games are the largest form of entertainment in Japan, way bigger than movies. He didn't mean that Japanese make more games than movies but that they spend more on them. Video games have a level of respect there that many here would not understand. Like movies here, games there are used for societal expression. The stories they tell are taken seriously. To put it simply, video games to most Japanese are not just "toys" (or just things to be played).