The Japanese Angle 20/10

20 Oct 2008 at 10:44:00 by Jake Kawaguchi

Welcome back to The Japanese Angle, where I explain the recent geometry of Japan’s irregular-shape games industry while supping fine Morizo shochu. This week: the first overture of Wii Music, Japan’s enduring love for Macross and Gundam, and depressed hardware sales in the calm after TGS.


Wii Music cued

Wii Music was released in this little corner of the world last Thursday, though its presence on Japanese TV had been building to a crescendo since early September. The first TV ads were little more than shots of a young woman ‘playing’ her Wii Remote – no game footage included. After a week of that, we got to see some more of Nintendo’s ‘normal, happy people’ playing Wii Music in groups, at home, in various family/party settings. And we got to see what it was they were playing, with in-game video segued in to make the point that these were indeed ads for Wii Music, and that Wii Music is indeed a game what you play on the telly.

Anyway, the point is this: Nintendo is doing a typically comprehensive job of promoting what could well be the new Wii Fit or the new Wii Sports (both of those games have sold millions of copies in Japan alone). Although it’s not possible to say for certain just yet – the first-week sales stats won’t be in until Thursday – I think it’s likely Wii Music will be top of the Japanese charts next week and there or thereabouts for many months.

Oddly, there was no review of Wii Music in last week’s Famitsu. There was, however, an ‘enjoy play guide’ to help early buyers get into the game, along with a bit of copy on the magazine’s cover that said, “From today, you too are an artist!” (Some nice subliminal promotion there, perhaps – who knows, Nintendo might even have paid for its placement…)  


Macross takes Japan, Gundam up next

Top of the charts this week is a PSP game called Macross: Ace Frontier, which managed to shift 103,676 UMDs during its first seven days on the shelves. It’s hardly a surprise to see a Macross game at the top of the charts, although it has been a few years since the last one, 2003’s SEGA-developed arcade-to-PS2 port of Chouji-ku Yousai Macross.

At any rate, Namco Bandai has a monopoly on the publishing of Japanese robo-sci-fi licenses in videogame form, and there’s another such PSP game waiting (in a hangar somewhere, probably) to emulate Macross: Ace Frontier’s success. It’s called, rather brilliantly, Gundam Vs. Gundam. I challenge you to think of a more one-sided, self-defeating title for a game!

Gundam Vs. Gundam (which is down for a November 20th release in Japan) is a port of an arcade game; its ace is the prospect of four-player local network action in the shape of two-against-two battles. This kind of thing is keeping the PSP successful in Japan right now: the craze for multiplayer PSP games began with Capcom’s Monster Hunter Portable, but it’s since enveloped all sorts of other PSP hits, including Phantasy Star Portable and Macross: Ace Frontier.

In December, another new Gundam game will likely top the charts when Namco Bandai releases Gundam Musou 2 – aka Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2, the sequel to its excellent multi-platform Koei collaboration of last year. I had chance to play this one at TGS and found it to be just as solid as the first game, but with a better frame-rate and refined AI.

As long as the quality doesn’t drop, and as long as they continue to laser-attack the Japanese charts into submission, you can expect many more Macross and Gundam games out of Namco Bandai.


Japan’s console crunch

By now, you should be familiar with the sight of big numbers rapidly turning to little ones. This phenomenon is known as The Economy.

Even console hardware sales in Japan are apparently being affected (in part, anyway) by the money gloom: last week, all formats’ sales figures were DOWN-DOWN-DOWN. For Microsoft and Sony’s home console businesses, in particular, this was obviously bad news. The 360, which was on an upturn, moved only 7,763 machines; the PS2 dropped to 6,982 consoles sold for the week; while the PS3 sat in last position, humbled, with a piffling 5,734 sales.

But that doesn’t properly reflect the story of handheld sales (which were also DOWN). Many gamers here were put off buying new PSPs because of last week’s launch of the PSP-3000 hardware, so there should be a rebound there for Sony next week. And Nintendo is in a similar position, with the DSi due on November 1st and many people quite justifiably planning to wait for the new version.

Unfortunately, nowhere in Japan is accepting reservations for DSi hardware. I’ve visited and called a dozen stores, but everyone gives virtually the same answer: “We don’t know how many we’re being allocated; we don’t know if or when we’ll begin to accept reservations.” One major store even had the cheek to tell me that the “manufacturer will release the DSi on November 1st, but we’re not sure when our DSi launch will be.” What does that mean? Chances are, it’s a line to dissuade people from waiting. It’s not working.

Tip for the week: The Japanese DSi launch to be a sham of two shams of a mockery.     

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