Are games dying?

[Taro Toporific]

Are games <yawn> dying?

Japanese Show Waning Interest in Video Games
LA Times / January 21, 2003
Preliminary industry figures show that combined hardware and software sales fell for the second consecutive year in 2002 to $4 billion, down 2.4%.
"Of course the market won't shrink to zero," said Shunji Yamashina, analyst with Morgan Stanley Securities in Tokyo. "But video games just aren't cutting edge anymore. Kids have a lot more options now."
Arguably, the biggest factor contributing to the industry's slump in Japan is a demographic transformation that is creating one of the most rapidly aging populations on the planet. In other words, there is a steady decline in the number of young people here.

[Big Booger]

What they need is to change from the 2D to the 3D, virtual reality type stuff, and start gearing the games to older generations. Imagine holograhic, 3D mahjong, igo, etc... Or exercise games for housewifes that are holograhic and three dimensional..
turn on machine, out pops a 3D holographic workout instructor, saying "get your fat ass off that couch and get to exercising"... hehehe
Pretty interesting as a concept.. would be nice if the things could respond more intelligently to you and your statements. Game makers should concentrate more on the AI of games, making them more interesting and challenging.

Games in Japan will die because kiddies have been over-saturated with them.
BB

[Taro Toporific]

What they need is to change from the 2D to the 3D, virtual reality type stuff, and start gearing the games to older generations. Imagine holographic, 3D mahjong, igo, etc... [AI]

Everyday I see video games losing market share to cell phone games. There are combination cell phone/hand held video game systems and this will be drain on game companies. LOOK around Japan... the best state-of-art game graphics on PCs are passe compared to all those people playing low-res keitai texting and games on the subway.

Most Japanese opt for keitai's technical inferiority and portability in the their gaming, surfing and texting. Most Japanese photos are now being taken with cam phones, not silver-film or quality digi-cams. Hell, even for photo geek like me, my 5MB pixel camera gets less use than my lady's keitai-cam.
"KEITAI KILLED the VIDEO STAR"

[Big Booger]

Imagine though what people would do with an holographic cell phone..

I would love it. BUt you are right, people want simplicity, mobility, and lots of bang for the buck. I personally hate cell phone games but I do use my ketai cam nearly everyday.
BB

[Taro Toporific]

Imagine though what people would do with an holographic cell phone..

At my pool/gym, Japanese girls often offer to take a couple keitai photos for me of a particularly striking* woman in the women's locker room if I speculate on what she 'really' looks like.

I've even seen signs saying, "No keitai cams," posted in some places already in some clubs, such as Gold's Gym Yokohama.

*strikingly good or bad

[Taro Toporific]

Imagine though what people would do with an holographic cell phone..

Via Plastic.com Will Game Boy Fall Victim To Nokia Man?[/url]

[Kurofune]

At my pool/gym, Japanese girls often offer to take a couple keitai photos for me of a particularly striking* woman in the women's locker room if I speculate on what she 'really' looks like.

Seriously?

[Taro Toporific]

At my pool/gym, Japanese girls often offer to take a couple keitai photos for me of a particularly striking* woman in the women's locker room if I speculate on what she 'really' looks like.

Seriously?

Plenty of Japanese women think taking a couple keitai dressing room shots as a harmless if silly request to fufill. In Japan where nudity in itself, in context, is normal---the sento, onsen, or gym is the "right" context.

In a similiar vein, in office environments, it's often the sempai OL that sets up the youngest shinjin hired for a fling with the boss. Plenty of times, upon seeing my full pro camera bag for IT trade shows, OLs have started posing for me without any prompting on my part, if no one else was around.

Hell, come to think about it, on many first dates I've ever been on in Japan, the ladies would check out their "competion", and our conversation would turn into a fashion/body evaluation.

Welcome to Japan.

[bluepxl]

What they need is to change from the 2D to the 3D

GUH, no way, that is what they need to go BACK to!! back to the days of the REAL 2D stuff. the sweet looking SNES games. we need more side scrollers, we need more overhead adventures, we need more pixels, we need more 16 and 8 bits! i am sick of this ugly polygon 3D crap. games were more popular it seems back in the day. and if they release games like they used to be, i think that would appeal to the older gaming generation when it used to be huge. they would love it.

nintendo in particular needs to REDO BS SATILLITE VIEW AND RELEASE BS LEGEND OF ZELDA REMIX!!!

hehe, sure, none of these things would be financially wise, but maybe it would reach back out to the early gamers like us...

[bluepxl]

oh and somebody bring back SNK and technos!

[Big Booger]

i hate 2d.. so cheesy,
hehehe
BB

[bluepxl]

pixels are beautiful, man! i only date women who are no more than 16-bits-- anymore than that i cannot handle

[Kyoto Gaijin]

Imagine though what people would do with an holographic cell phone..

I would love it. BUt you are right, people want simplicity, mobility, and lots of bang for the buck. I personally hate cell phone games but I do use my ketai cam nearly everyday.
BB

In case you didn't know, Sharp do a 3d holographic keitai already:

http://www.sharp.co.jp/products/sh251is/index.html

Its rather cool...

[Taro Toporific]

I think I'll take the RED pill! See you in the Matrix!

Oh no Rob!
Are ya really gonna join the Matrix Reloaded Fashion Show like all the billboards that are up in Tokyo?


When I first saw this I thought these billboards for a SM leather fashion collection, not a CyberPunk movie.

[Taro Toporific]

WOW! Thanks for the link. Awesome trailer! No, not really into leather.

SM leather sure would clash with your signature Rob Pongi Bowtie(tm).
leather ties

Check out the following for more idea for your bowties...

[Taro Toporific]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/fun.games/03/12/game.sales.reut/index.html

LONDON (Reuters) -- Global video game sales are projected to grow nearly 10 percent this year..

Ok, listen to the folks in the trenches are whinning about...

A Specter is Haunting Gaming

The mood at the Game Developers Conference this year was, fundamentally, one of despair. To even the blindest apologist for the silly, if monstrous, construct the game industry has become, the handwriting on the wall was clear.
Year by year, budgets increase. Year by year, sales increase less. And year by year, the publishers become more conservative]Mene mene takel upharsin.[/i] The writing is on the wall. And here we have my high-school buddy Warren Spector to confirm it: There in his keynote speech, telling us not to worry, just be happy. Drink the cool aid. Go to work for an in-house studio. Develop a licensed product. By God, Warren would be glad to do a Harry Potter game. What a lovely universe to work in. It's the future. It's the way things are. And it's not so bad.

[kotatsuneko]

man, who cares about the current lame generation of games..?

with just one emulator, and a full tosec/good set of roms you have enough retro gaming goodness to last you a decade..

this is the first gen i havent bought a current console since pong!

and of course if you have a flash card, you can emulate nes/sms on the ol gba.. and the gp32 can fully emulate the pc engine and msx1/2 decks!

sure you could even buy and old arcade cab, link up your deck to it, or slide in a laptop with a full mame/neo geo set and youre good for years!

erm, get retro or something ; ]

[American Oyaji]

Thats funny you say that.

Chrono Trigger came out in 1994.

I just played it and finished it a couple of months ago. Right on my Mac

Ive got all the Final Fantasies that were made for the SNES. Shadowrun.

I need to get a control pad, because using the keyboard for certain games sucks.

[kotatsuneko]

if you look at retrogames/zophars domain, you can get a snes pad adaptor.. and bic kamera still sell snes pads new!

also you can get something called a magic box from lik sang et al which will let you use a psx/dcast/saturn pad on your pc pretty much like a sidewinder.. actually the sidewinder isnt such a bad pad...

think bic kam also sell a similar device for psx only i think.,.

and sanwa supply do a very mean mswitch arcade stick for bout 3000 yen, but dont know if it has native win support, and if emulators will find it or not...

[Taro Toporific]

man, who cares about the current lame generation of games..?...erm, get retro or something ]

What's Wrong With the Japanese Games Industry
Sunday, March 30, 2003 via Tokyopia.com

The third and final piece in our look of the problems facing the Japanese games industry .... don't also miss the amusing interview with the professor of Japan's first four year degree course in video game production....

Interviewer: ...what's the POINT of this program if it's not to prepare people for a job in the game industry?"

Professor: "Well, the reason this program is coming into being is because of the population decline in Japan."

Interviewer: "Uh... what?"

Professor: "The population is declining, right? Well, fewer kids means that the schools are getting less and less competitive. And really, most Japanese schools offer the same courses. So, to attract more students, some schools are building new and exclusive programs. That's why the school is doing this."

Interviewer: "So it's not really about a love of video games or anything."

Professor: "Not really. And when you enter this department, it's about learning all about interactive games, not just training to get a job at Nintendo."

Interviewer: "But, the type of students who are gunning for this program are the type who want to get jobs at Nintendo!"

Professor: "Well, they don't want just gamers for this program. They [we] want a broad range of students."

Interviewer: "All they're getting are the top percentile of entrance-exam results. They're probably not getting any artists, any creative game designers

[Taro Toporific]

Xbox lay-offs in Japan
MCV, UK -- 24 June
According to a new report in Nikkei BizTech, Microsoft has laid off 34 employees in the Xbox division of its Japanese offices.

The layoffs apparently caused a commotion among the workers because of differences in business practices between Japan and the United States. ... approximately 200 employees, was called to a meeting at the company's Tokyo office on March 20th.

The employees were then told to check their e-mail inboxes, in which 34 of the workers received a notice to pack their belongings and go to the conference room. The passageway to the conference room had security guards protecting all the elevators and emergency exits. The terminated employees could use the restroom only if they were accompanied by one of the retained employees. According to one of the employees who was cut, it felt as though they were treated like criminals.
Upon reaching the conference room, the terminated employees were told to wait for their turn to meet with their supervisor and the human resources manager. When their turn came, the terminated employees were told that they were being laid off because their positions had been eliminated.
The employees were then told to check their e-mail inboxes, in which 34 of the workers received a notice to pack their belongings and go to the conference room. The passageway to the conference room had security guards protecting all the elevators and emergency exits. The terminated employees could use the restroom only if they were accompanied by one of the retained employees. According to one of the employees who was cut, it felt as though they were treated like criminals.

[kotatsuneko]

all together now.. microsoft swallows..

still, with a mod, and a 120gig hd slung inside, the box isnt a bad budget dvx/emulation rig..

[Taro Toporific]

all together now.. microsoft swallows..

"Internal rift" at Japanese Xbox subsidiary over layoffs
gamesindustry.biz / 15:46 25/06/2003
"There are more suitable ways to conduct business here in Japan..."

...a surprise staff meeting for the 200-strong Xbox workforce, where employees were addressed by Microsoft's director of business development, Par Singh.

"The Xbox sales situation has become severe," Singh reportedly told the meeting. "Regrettably, an early retirement program has been instituted. Please return to your desks and check your email for a letter from the Personnel Department. If you receive one, follow the instructions immediately."

Around 34 people out of the division received termination notices; this in itself is still considered a massively serious move in Japan, which has only quite recently done away with the concept of company jobs being for life. To make matters worse, however, the company refused to allow the laid off employees to return to their desks, speak to other employees or visit the bathroom without security staff present.

Although this might not sound like particularly unusual behaviour to western employees, the nature of this downsizing was seen as humiliating by the staff involved and their colleagues, and has caused serious turmoil within the department - a backlash which saw some within the Xbox department writing directly to Microsoft Japan president, Shinichi Ata.

Microsoft has repeatedly been accused of failing to understand the Japanese market when it comes to Xbox, and of attempting to apply western logic to a marketplace which follows a different set of rules. It would now appear that this problem is not merely a promotion and marketing issue; Microsoft's attempts to apply western sensibilities in Japan extend right into its business management practices. Morale can't have been very high in Xbox Japan to begin with, and the picture painted in Nikkei Keizai Shimbun is certainly not one of a happy ship. Steve Ballmer's assurances last week of continuing to aim for Microsoft's long term goals for Xbox in Japan seem even more unlikely than ever.

[Iraira]