Shibuya Tsutaya started their Wii pre-orders today, opening the store at the regular time of 10am, and selling out of pre-orders by lunchtime. The time taken to process the orders was ridiculous, but it looks like they’ve taken somewhere between 250-300 pre-orders today. Other stores that have taken pre-orders also seem to be sold out, but there are some stores, such as Bic Camera in Shibuya, that have yet to run a pre-order campaign. Pics of the lines at Tsutaya below. Read the rest of this entry »

The launch number for the Wii in Japan is going to be 400,000 units, compared with 100,000 for the PlayStation 3. This may seem like a big number, but it is a lot smaller than it seems.

The PlayStation 2 (around 650K), GameCube (450K), Game Boy Advance (around 650K) and DS (500K) all launched with more units, and except for the DS, all launched outside the big holiday buying season. In 2004, Nintendo proved that it could replenish stock quickly and sell more than a million DS units in December despite the Game Boy Advance continuing to sell in that period (in fact, it outsold the PS2 during a week after the DS launched) and the PSP launching, and in the case of the DS Lite, Nintendo exceeded its target for its first month by 100,000 units. For the Wii, 4 Million are due to be shipped by the end of 2006 worldwide.

But the record-breaking DS situation in Japan proved the limits of Nintendo’s production capacity in a given period, and even 1 Million units for Japan may not be enough compared to speculation of a comfortable 2 Million units in North America. The DS Lite is also destined to enjoy extremely high sales in December, probably over 1.5 Million units. There seems to be buzz of shortages for the Wii in Europe as well, so we’ll see how Nintendo handles this launch worldwide. From an availability standpoint, the Wii is the only true worldwide launch, as the Xbox 360 was plagued with shortages last year and launched without much attention in Japan. The Wii will be the ultimate test of the viability of worldwide launches.

Since Ridge Racer 7 is the main launch game I’m interested in, I’d like to take a look at the correlation between Ridge Racer and PlayStation brand today. Every PlayStation launch has seen a Ridge Racer title - it’s tradition. For each launch, Ridge Racer has always been the highest selling game of the launch titles. Surely the PlayStation 3 will not present any resistance to this momentum, no pun intended.

According to ninja-blogger, Sinobi:
80% of PS1 buyers took home a copy of Ridge Racer,
57% of PS2 buyers took home a copy of Ridge Racer V, and
77% of PSP buyers took home a copy of Ridge Racers.

They’re very high percentages across the board, and perhaps the only reason Ridge Racer V dragged its heels is because the PS2 was also being picked up as a reasonably priced DVD player at the time. With the infancy of the Blu-ray market, would it be wrong to imagine Ridge Racer 7 could possibly sell to more than 75% of PS3 buyers? We’ll find out in about a week.

It doesn’t really feel like the PS3 is coming out this Saturday. There hasn’t been a bombardment of TV ads until today; there wasn’t a demo unit in Akihabara when I went on Saturday (it turns out they all got installed on Sunday instead); and there’s still no price info about the games that we can download from the PlayStation store. But it’s still happening, apparently.

1111 - that’s what the TV ads are all about. I didn’t get it at first, but after wondering what the heck I just saw, it started to sink in. It’s typical slick Sony advertising, but it doesn’t really show a lot of the product on sale.

It’s such a paper launch, if ever there was one. It’s way worse than the PSP launch, especially in terms of games that will be available. To tell the truth, I’m starting to have major second thoughts about buying my own. At launch, the only game I’m interested in is Ridge Racer 7. There have been recent videos of this showing courses pulled straight out of Ridge Racer 6. I know there’s some new courses, and there’s a lot of good new music. The new customization aspect looks cool, and I’m sure team racing will be a blast, but it still feels cheap when they recycle such recent content. And that’s it — aside from Ridge Racer, no launch titles interest me. I would have got Motorstorm, perhaps, if they were putting online in the Japanese release, but it seems they are rushing it out to pad out the scant release schedule. So it’s effectively going to be a Ridge Racer machine for a couple of months at least. Not cool. If I can get decent money for selling it, I’m seriously considering that route.

But another thing that’s been bothering me — what does the general public think about the PS3? I’ve read retailer blogs where they say that customers are actually asking “What’s the difference between PS2 and PS3?”. Apart from Blu-ray, which typical consumers really don’t care much about, and HDTV, there isn’t a great deal. HD is one of those things that’s especially hard to notice unless you’re standing right in front of the display TVs too. No stores are going to have 50″ screens showing off true 1080p. Most just have 720p 21″ displays, which don’t do the graphics justice, of course. And that’s a big hurdle that Sony will have ahead of them. In fact, I’m not even sure if consumers actually want HDTVs. Certainly, there is a lot of force to buy new digital sets, thanks to the phasing out of analogue broadcasts, and nearly every digital set you see in stores is, you guessed it, HD. A very useful coincidence for making an argument about HD’s penetration. But does it mean anything about consumer desire for HD content?

Playing in the shoes of mildly topical Rico Rodriguez, a CIA regime change specialist, your holiday trip to the faux South American archipelagos San Espirito is anything but a covert mission. From the moment you parachute into the game, you will basically be shooting and blowing up pretty much everything in an attempt to overthrow the sitting president and help establish the guerilla factions. The game’s closest comparison games are GTA and, somewhat strangely, Pilotwings - following a sandbox style set up allowing the player to drop in to the main mission or any number of side missions. The Pilotwings comparison comes due to the experience of taking one of the games air-based vehicles for a ride and, of course, the ability to dive out of said vehicles at insane heights only to drift gently earthward via a parachute. Read the rest of this entry »

Capcom Japan announced the dissolution of the young, independent development team “Clover Studio” basically in order to increase development efficiency. The team was created on July 1, 2004 in order for Capcom to create more games that were unique and creative, and was headed by a few of Capcom’s greatest creators, including Shinji Mikami (Biohazard, Biohazard 4), Hideki Kamiya (Biohazard 2, Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe) and Atsushi Inaba (Gyakuten Saiban/Phoenix Wright). Read the rest of this entry »

Square Enix’s first original title on the Xbox 360 is a collaboration between Game Arts, Seta and anima inc. Game Arts originally came up with the Silpheed concept back in the 80s on 8-bit home computers in Japan, Seta joined in development since the Mega CD release, and this time anima inc. has come on board to provide further polish to the game, making it worthy of the Square Enix logo on the front of the box, even if the publisher didn’t have a huge hand in the making of the game. Read the rest of this entry »

A quick scout around Tokyo’s famous western shopping district, Shibuya, revealed the following situation regarding Z-rated games, in particular Dead Rising, which was released today.

Bic Camera: No cases on display. No advertising in store. Willing buyers must take a small, non-descript card to the cashier to purchase. Game not present in Z-rated section.
Sakuraya: Poster on display on game floor, but 75% concealed by a Pokemon display. Game boxes on display in small Z-rated section at the back of the floor.
Tsutaya: No cases or advertising at all. It didn’t appear the game was on sale, in fact. The game was not even present in the Z-rated section.

These are the three main retailers that sell games in the area. The new rating system, introduced 1 Mar 2006, means that newly-rated Z games are only for people aged 18 and over. It is, in fact, an offence to sell the game to people younger than that. Read the rest of this entry »

Tokyo Game Show 2006 received 192,411 visitors this year, some 16,355 more than last year. Most of the new visitors came on Saturday, causing some of the biggest crowds ever seen at the show.

Though this is hardly a fair indication of where the industry is heading, particularly since Wii was largely absent, here is a headcount of titles shown for the various systems at the event, both playable and video.

These were counted from the following publishers: Sony Computer Entertainment, Microsoft, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Square Enix, Banpresto, Sega, Konami, Koei, D3 Publisher, Genki, Hudson, Broccoli, Irem, SNK Playmore, Marvellous Interactive, Tecmo, Takara Tomy

Though we didn’t play a great deal this year, our favourite game of the show was Ridge Racer 7. The crispness of the graphics, together with great course design, and classic Ridge Racer gameplay make this a delicious title we feverishly look forward to sinking our teeth into later this year when it gets released. Honorary mentions must also go to Trusty Bell: Chopin’s Dream, for it’s innovative dark/light gameplay and wonderfully shaded cartoon-like graphics, and to D3’s Earth Defence Force 3, with all the bug-shooting mayhem any self-respecting B-movie enthusiast hankers after. It was also interesting to note just how the balance has shifted from PS2 to DS this past year. Though the number of games on show doesn’t reflect this, it was more apparent in terms of floor space, with much of Square Enix’s booth, in particular, being devoted to DS.

Contrary to previous rumours, Tokyo Game Show will take place next year. Preliminary dates have been set as 21 - 23 September. Hopefully we’ll spend less time faffing about and more time playing games next year!

Last week I experienced something fairly remarkable, although anecdotal. Three of my friends and I walked into an EB Games. I wasn’t expecting me or anyone to buy anything, but I was shocked when my three friends each bought a new DS Lite; two of them bought jet black and one of them bought noble pink.

And like the gaming dorks we were, they opened theirs up while I took my Japanese white one out, and we had a few Mario Kart DS races on download play in the middle of the mall. This is just one example I’ve experienced with gaming among college students at or near college. Read the rest of this entry »