Pokemon no 1 in Japan, but sales dropped. What's with the Japanese

Pokemon Black & White reign as king in Japanese sales chart, moving 168.541 copies. Despite this, the overall sales in Japan dropped by whopping 34% from the week before.
We probably heard it before that Japanese game market is slowing down. Many people blame Japanese developer as lack of creativity when compared to the Westerner. Even some publishers like Inafune branded Japan games market as doomed. Japanese developers keep making more or less the same game as a decade ago. So where is those creativity gone?

Before we put the blame to those games developer, let's try to see from other perspective. Japanese economy has been slump lately. There is no sign that it will pick up soon. The yen is keep getting stronger and stronger, thus making Japanese product less attractive to the global market.
The population is dwindling, means that nobody support the old generation. Job market shrunk. Japanese people are afraid to open business and rather work to a company.

With the economy gloom, people are afraid to spend and brings the whole thing down. It might be a reason to be pessimistic. It probably not because lacks of creativity of Japanese people that drives the gaming market down, but maybe the whole market in such a bad shape that makes the gaming industry as it is right now.
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Nintendo announces $300 3DS price point for Japan market

Today Nintendo drop the price point as well as release date for the new 3DS. The successor of NDS will cost 25.000 yen ($299) for Japanese, although the price for US and Europe market still hasn't been confirmed.
3DS will release on 26th February 2011 in Japan bundled with 2GB SD card, charging cradle, stylus, and "paper cards" to play augmented reality games.

3DS apparently will have its own virtual library from Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance games and two new games announced for 3DS itself, Resident Evil: Mercenaries and Mega Man Legend 3.

It is hardly a surprising news about that $300 price point. All Nintendo's system has always been around $250 - $300 dollars. I think it is a good numbers for a handheld game device.
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What's up with the thrashing ads, Sony?

You all probably know Sony's marketing campaign that involves thrash talking Kevin Butler and that kid Marcus. Kevin Butler is a funny man who take aim againts Kinect, and recently Sony via yaybuttons.com slams Kinect for not having buttons - "Not like save the whale important, more like not play games that suck important."

And not only that, Sony too takes aim with iPhone with ads featured that Marcus kid (I forgot his full name and couldn't be bothered to google it) that more or less says," yes, iPhone can have so many games, but quality games are in PSP."

I admit, at first it was funny to watch Kevin Butler thrash Xbox 360's Kinect project, but after a while it get stale and was it really necessary.

First of all, Sony might have a point, yeah iPhone games are more or less casual compared to PSP games, and buttons can sometime be important in playing games, but Sony should take a look at themselves and admit that their products have a lot of flaws too.

Admit it or not, it doesn't change the fact that iPhone is chasing PSP and might overtake Sony's PSP as a platform for games. Other thing to be consider, is that Apple's installed base is much bigger than PSP, and it might more appealing to game developer.

With PSPgo a major failure, I think Sony should not thrashing other people, and concentrate to its product because deep inside I'm pretty sure Sony scared shit of Apple and Microsoft.
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Golden generation era for facebook games is approaching the end

It took my attention when reading an article from Joytiq about facebook games by creator of the widely popular Plant vs Zombie.

The golden generationof facebook casual gaming might soon end. It is not that those casual games will dissapear, however too many developers overcrowded the market already. For last couple of years, it was easier to make money from facebook games, and suddenly everybody just jump into the bandwagon, thinking there's alot of untapped market.

Today, its harder to justified an investment to make facebook games profitable. The competition is harder, and the growth of facebook isn't as fast as it used to be.

There are too many games nowadays in Facebook, the competition is fierce especially for new players. Developer has to be smart to engage its players to keep playing otherwise once they gone, they gone forever. One of those tricks is giving a free extra if user login for 5 consecutive days, and even penalize players for not logging in often! Not to mention the status pages is overcrowded with friend asking help for their games as a quick reminder or asking other friends to join to get another bonuses.

For all those annoyance, its a sign that developers are trying hard to get as much as customer possible and try to monetize them, because face the fact, a facebook games' lifespan is not that long. Maybe a month or two and people will either get bored or found another new game and couldn't be bothered to come back.

Facebook might be one of the destination for casual gaming, but beware, it is definitely not a safe haven for developers!!
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Microsoft going to increase Xbox LIVE subscription starting 1st November

Some bad news for Xbox 360 users, Microsoft will raise current Xbox 360 subscription by 1st November 2010. The new price for 1 year subscription is $60, $10 more than previous $50. Monthly rates raises from $8 to $10 and Quarterly rates will be $25 from previous $20.

Like it or not, this bound to happen. Microsoft is a smart company and they probably has researched and realized that current core customer won't be abandoning ship for just $10. Yes, $10 might not be much for some people, but given current economic and competition, it hardly the right time for a price increase. PS3 offers free online play as well as PC. Sure, PSN might not be as robust as Xbox LIVE, but again.. its free.

 
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Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep won't be available on PSPgo

PSPgo owners is officially become PSP"gownerz" with the news that Kingdom Hearts :Birth by Sleep won't be coming at all to Playstation network, or at least Sony said that there is no plan currently. In other words, PSPgo won't be getting their Kingdom Hearts at all.

Its just the way of saying that Sony and developers are giving up on their "experimental" download only PSPgo. Such a big title like Kingdom Hearts should definitely be available across all PSP platform.

I don't understand whats the fuss for Square Enix not going to make the game available through PSN? The game is finished, and all they got to do is to upload into PSN. Even though PSPgo population is relatively small, it should sell at least couple of thousands downloads for sure.
Well.. Maybe we will never know the reasons, but for time being, just forget your PSPgo will be an ultimate gaming machine, more like ultimate piece of overprice junk.
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Kane & Lynch 2's story mode is 4 hours long? Is that laziness?

What is your reaction when you learned that Kane & Lynch 2's story mode is only 4 hours long? The word lazy, ridiculous, bad value for money may come across your mind.

Games used to offer much more hours especially JRPG which guarantee you 40+ hours of gameplay. But today's games are much much shorter. I remember when I played Call of Duty 4 single player for the first time. I was surprised that the story only lasted around 10 - 12 hours, but I can accept that CoD 4 multiplayer kept me for a long time. Soon all other games seems to follow through, and it seems its getting shorter and shorter. Splinter Cell: Conviction is only 6 hours long by the way and that is kind of ridiculous.

Shorter gameplay might give a better story telling, good pacing, climax, anti climax and everything. But 4 hours is pushing too hard. I can understand that developer might want to have a better return. Development cost nowadays is much more expensive than it used to be because a game might have a single player part and multiplayer part. Getting a AAA rating games might take couple years. But in the end, customer too should feel the value of money cause game is not cheap also.  If developer cannot meet the customer expectation, they won't buy it. developer didn't have a good return, no sequel, and in the end everybody going to lose. 
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