|
|
 |
 |
 | | | | |
 |
|||
 |
||||||
 | | | | | |
|
 |
 |
||||
|
"Back From The Brink" Having finally returned, the MGT Report will try to present a little synopsis of the more interesting things going on in Japan during our absence. PS One: Announced and Released! Although one web site seems to have dug up patent details of a truly portable Playstation this week (possibly a scrapped concept), the PS One, Sony's smaller, more stylish version of the Playstation, has already shipped in Japan, albeit at a relatively high price (15,000 yen, approximately $141). It's already clear that the new shape and size make it a much more chic purchase, and the key factor is that the price point for PS One will be very different in the West -- Sony is looking to release it for $79 in the U.S. and UKP79 in the U.K., rumors appear to indicate. Most interesting... the console wars heat up, no?
Color Wonderswan: More Rumors? Rumors of a possible release of a Bandai Wonderswan in color, with Square backing, fail to go away, with a new black-and-white Working Chocobo Square Wonderswan title due in September (Harvest Moon-style?), and whispers now suggesting there will be a color version of Seiken Densetsu (Secret of Mana series) on or near launch. Not quite Final Fantasy, but still most interesting. However, with Gameboy Advance having lots of excellent RPGs likely for it, with heavy Konami and Nintendo backing, Bandai could do with getting a move on. Playstation 2 Arcade Board Specs Released The specifications for the arcade board based on the Playstation 2 (PS2A) have been announced, and it's entirely possible that it will be a relatively low-cost piece of hardware that could dominate other manufacturers in a similar way to Sega's NAOMI Dreamcast-based hardware. Interestingly, though, its storage will be CD- or DVD-based. Historically, CD-ROMs haven't really been used in arcade machines, apart from Capcom's CPS3 and some stranger custom hardware set-ups. possibly due to reliability issues. Sega's NAOMI used memory chips, not CDs. But then, arcade is somewhat of a fading market, and those titles particularly popular in Japan right now (Bemani and clones) hardly need immensely sophisticated hardware in the processor, just in the controller inputs. Other News It's been mentioned in a couple of places, but Japan is due for a massive increase in Internet usage. The Japan Ministry of Telecommunications has apparently predicted that use will triple by 2005, with about 60 percent of the country being online by then. Naturally, in order to be online, you have to be using some kind of device, and Playstation 2 seems perfectly poised to be one of those devices (give or take the non-announcement of a normal phone-based modem -- is this going to be a big mistake in the long run?). Nintendo's Space World will happen August 25-27 in Tokyo, and will most likely include the first proper showing of Gameboy Advance and the cellular phone modem to go with it. Keep in mind that cellular phones are much more mainstream in Japan, so this is less of a weird thing than you might expect. There seems to be no particular likelihood of seeing Dolphin games running at Space World, though -- but perhaps some video of the kind of power it can display, if we're lucky.
It's interesting indeed to see Konami's hidden-from-the-West, Pokemon-ish Gameboy RPG score another massive hit, straight in at No.1 with 380,000 sold in its first week. Surely Konami must be considering bringing this over to the U.S. and/or Europe soon, considering the strength of Pokemon-style titles such as Monster Rancher and Digimon amongst the rugrats of the U.S. and Europe right now? The reason behind a lot of its success seems to be the Pokemon/Magic-style trading cards, which are apparently just about the most popular cards in Japan right now. Right behind it, naturally, is Square's behemoth Final Fantasy IX, with another quarter of a million sales this week alone on top of 2,225,000 already sold. Even so late in the Playstation's life cycle, this shows it's possible to launch major, expensive titles and get major sales. And the amount of paraphernalia available in Famitsu relating to FF9 is truly astounding -- statues, sculptures, plush toys, rings, gun-sword-mounted Zippo lighters, and, yep, inflatable cacti. This is beginning to happen in the West, but it shows a little better how computer games are often the equivalent of hit TV series or movies in Japan in terms of related merchandising. The rest of this particular Japanese chart is practically chock-a-block with very Eastern-specific game titles, from the new Wonderswan title SD Gundam (a great property for Bandai to give exclusives to their own handheld with, and practically a national institution in Japan), all the way across to Konami's Powerful Pro Baseball 7 for Playstation 2. Why is baseball so Eastern-specific in this case? Read on.
It's been interesting to see Konami's attempts to gain more of a sports stronghold in the West, seeing as they are probably the dominant sports publisher in Japan (admittedly a much less sports-centric market). The problem they have, however, is that the top-purchased sports titles in the East are probably soccer and baseball (and golf?), compared to American football, basketball, and baseball making up the hot subgenres in America, with various other regional variations (with soccer being the only constant?) reigning supreme in Europe. I'm discounting professional wrestling as a sport for now. So, in America at least, Konami has gone with the ESPN license and a hope to really challenge 989 and EA over multiple sports. The problem they have is that their sports games are actually still very Japanese-specific, especially baseball, which in all their best-selling Japanese incarnations is super-deformed (big-headed cartoon characters smacking the ball around). There's just no way that either ESPN could countenance this as part of their license, or it can be easily adapted (Konami Japanese SD-baseball games also have a lot of RPG-style strategy in them, something else that isn't really popular in the U.S. as of yet.)
Which means Konami is, unfortunately, working from scratch in making a new "realistic" baseball game, with development in the U.S. for the U.S. market, and by the sound of it, they've been having some trouble, unfortunately. They can't rely on their rock-solid Japanese development because they're occupied making the same sport but for a Japanese market hungry for different features. They have the same problem with basketball, only no Japanese titles are being produced at all for the sport. Finally, as for soccer, Konami soccer games have always been excellent. They're not super-deformed or too "quirky," and sold pretty well in Europe. But they're just not mainstream enough in the U.S. to sell hundreds of thousands, and in Europe the lack of license and lack of regular year/season updates has hurt sales somewhat, which is a major shame considering the quality of the ISS series. As a contrast, EA's FIFA series has been very careful to come out yearly with gradually increasing quality, from being of rather woeful quality but major sales, to now being of very decent quality and major sales.
In fact, FIFA is even now crossing back into Japan by way of EA's alliance with Square. According to the most recent charts, FIFA Soccer World Championship has already sold almost 250,000 units for PS2 in Japan, impressive given the current hardware ownership figures and the number of the Japanese who are allegedly just watching DVDs on their PS2. Konami's own PS2 soccer title is due out in Japan next month, though. And meanwhile, Square's PS2 Japanese baseball game is lost in licensing hell with none other than... Konami (who was sublicensing parts of the Japanese leagues to them, I believe). Rumors of a big rift there continue to swell. Until next time, keep it MGT... Simon Carless is a game designer/project director at a UK games developer. His game credits include design on PC and Playstation titles for (amongst others) Eidos and GT Interactive. He can be contacted at h0l@mono211.com. Simon would like to thank Magic Box, Re:Tokyo, Gamespot, FGNOnline, Core Magazine, and his other Japanese sources for the information that helps to write this column. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
News
Analysis 
