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Latest News from Japan

 
Latest News from Japan
Latest News from Japan
White Water Simulator For Sega Joypolis Arcade

At last some positive news about Sega arcades. On November 3, Sega will bow a new white-water rafting simulator in its Tokyo Joypolis amusement park. It is a 12-player simulation ride with a huge 180 degree wrap-around screen. The ride lasts four minutes and costs JPY600.

KCEO To Sell Outside Konami Group

According to the Nihon Keizai Shinbun, KCEO Inc.(formerly Konami Computer Entertainment Osaka Co. Ltd), which went public last year, is to begin selling game software to companies outside the Konami group from March 31. Up until now, KCEO Inc. has been developing game software for Konami and receiving royalties. The decision to sell games to non-group companies will reduce the company's dependence on Konami.

Thrill Drive 2 in Development

According to one of our operator sources in Japan, Konami are developing Thrill Drive 2. Its release date is not set and will probably depend on how Konami's business fares in the second half of this fiscal year. If results are poor, then Thrill Drive 2 will probably be released in Spring 2001 to give the figures a boost before the books close. If the figures are good, the game will probably be tweaked more and will not be released until September 2001.

Hudson, Infogrames Joint Venture

Japan's Hudson Software and France's Infogrames are to set up a joint venture company "Infogrames Hudson Co., Ltd.". The objective of the new company is to develop and market software for the next generation of home video game consoles, to adapt and market Infogramme's games in Japan and to link both companies' network contents. The capital of the new company is JPY60 million, with 30% invested by Hudson and 70% by Infogrames. The CEO will be from Hudson.

Sega To Release Sequel to "Top Skater"?

Rumours have it that Sega has a sequel to "Top Skater" in development. The machine name is "Air Trix" and features a skateboard mounted on a 360 degree turntable. Unlike "Top Skater" where the player had to manoeuvre through courses, in "Air Trix" all the action takes place on the half-pipe. Each stage lasts 30 seconds with the player passing on to the next stage depending on the number and quality of the tricks he managed. Release not clear yet.

Sega to Release Sports Jam

Sega's R&D subsidiary, WOW Entertainment, has developed a PCB game consisting of a compendium of sports mini-games. The PCB contains around 12 different sports events each with three different stages. Wow Entertainment was responsible for the R&D of House of the Dead 2 and Zombie Revenge.

Namco Forecast Loss For Year

Namco announced that they expect to make a loss for the fiscal year ending March 2001. The company gave various reaons for the downgrade. High on the list were the poor sales of arcade games in the U.S. and Europe and the disappointing performance of the company's chain of amusement arcades in the U.S. In Japan, the company suffered a indirect losses including stock appraisal losses (JPY2 billion), losses on sale of real estate holdings (JPY1.3 billion), staff layoff costs (JPY0.8 billion).

Namco's revised forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2000 now shows sales of JPY146.4 billion (JPY0.5 billion less than originally forecast) and loss of JPY2.1 billion (as against original forecast of a profit of JPY0.3 billion). Namco is depending heavily on good sales of three Play Station 2 titles due to be released in the second half of the year to even achieve the above figures. Its most recent forecast of results for the first half of the year are sales of JPY61.9 billion and a loss of JPY3.9 billion.

Lack of Parts Hits Sony

It seems highly likely that Sony will downgrade its forecast for the current fiscal year due to a string of problems. First of all, regarding the the launch of the Play Station 2 in the USA, only half the number of machines originally forecast will be shipped due to lack of parts. Initially, the forecast was for the first shipmen to the US to be one million units. This has now been cut to 500,000 units with a subsequent weekly shipment rate of 100,000. This means that only 1.3 million units will be shipped by the all-important Christmas season.

In addition to PS2 problems, Sony's subsidiary Aiwa is having a hard time and has revised its year-end forecast from a profit of JPY1.8 billion to a loss of JPY17 billion. Sony owns 50.6% of Aiwa's shares.

Sega Halts "Net@" Arcade Experiment

Sega have curtly announced that as of October 1, "Net@" is now officially offline with a promise that it will relaunch in Spring next year. The "Net@" experiment was launched in July with a test run in three Tokyo arcades. It was supposed to be the future of arcade gaming with films, TV shows as well as network gaming. The arcades were linked by an optical fiber network.

While the hardware was great, the software was lousy. Players drawn by the huge promotional fanfare must have been decidedly underwhelmed by the 2nd rate TV programs and lack of choice of network games. Sega says on its site that the down-time will be used to build long distance network connections in order to connect more arcades and to upgrade the content. Forget the TV shows, just get players in different locations playing against each other.

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With thanks to;

John Ryan

Manjiro Works

Tel: +81 90 2105 8084

Email:john@manjiro.com

Web: www.manjiro.com
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