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(1) Who cares.
(2-4) Possibly true, but the hype circa 2002-2003 didn't reflect this. (eg http://tokyopia.com/tk/archives/000094.php)

(5) True. But what the IT industry really needs is another Syquest or Iomega to come along and define a storage-centric format -- without all the bullshit politics surrounding Hollywood and video game consoles, and the enormous license royalties involved.

Tokyopia gave a review in July of some of the first UMD pr0n coming out from Japan. They also come with an, ahem, game of sorts...

wildly optimistic. or they're going to bring out some porno umd's.

Already got those, arigatou gozaimasu.

Personally, I love Tim Rogers' writing.

The problem is that many of you go into this "Review" thinking that you are going to be reading a review of a game, but in actuality you are reading a story. An experience, if you will. Kind of a review of what was going in Tim's life when he played Katamari Damacy, rather than a review of the game itself.

It might put off a lot of the people here, but I think it is quite interesting. His writing is frenetic at times, and most certainly stream-of-concious, and he oftentimes assumes the reader already knows about every obscure thing which interests him, but that is what makes his writing interesting. It serves to really get the reader into Tim's mind, and see things the way he sees them. It's this great internal perspective that really shows why things are wonderful to Tim, and captures certain insights that we would never make or experience ourselves, but are somehow made our own through Tim's writing.

The State of Tokyo Transit is one of his fiction stories which I first stumbled upon two years ago, and from the first sentence I was entranced. I highly reccommend giving it a read. He has a whole series on Tokyopia entitled, "The State of Tokyo" & randWord, but I think this is his best. Seriously, go read it. I think it's just great. I liked it so much that I e-mailed him after I read it the first time, and he told me that it's part of a book that he's written but has never been published. He seemed like quite a nice guy.

Amen AC, I love Tim Rogers' writing. If you like his reviews, you should read some of his stuff on Tokyopia. This story [tokyopia.com] is one of the best stories I have read, ever. I actually tracked down his e-mail address and wrote him a letter after I read it the first time, I liked it so much. There's a whole series, and they are definitely worth checking out, though I feel this is the strongest. Apparrently they're all from a book that he has written but can't get published... He seems like a great guy.

Regards,

-PhosterPharms

Huh?

The reports that many of Japan's larger department stores did not accept preorders for the PSP fearing shortages was widely reported, as was the fact this contributed to the long lines on the PSP's launch day. A few quick glances at google turn up:

Like many other major retailers in Japan, Yodobashi did not take PSP preorders. As a result, more than 1,200 hopeful game fans lined up throughout the long, cold night, some taking up their position as early as 3pm the previous day. .

Meanwhile, shortages of Sony's PlayStation Portable are already beginning to hit home in Japan, with the vast majority of retailers no longer able to take preorders ahead of Sunday's launch of the console."

It will be interesting to see what happens (in just over a week) when the PSP is launched in Japan. Retailers have not been accepting many preorders, and the device will be in short supply.

Sony's PSP preorder campaign was... practically nonexistent. There was no advance warning of preorders, which had most people checking in with shops on an almost daily basis trying to find out what was up. Of course, shopkeepers were completely in the dark as well.

What you won't find if you look around, however, are reports that the 2005 shipment of PSPs sold out. The first day shipment of PSPs of 200,000 did mostly sell out (i saw a figure of 160,000-180,000 in the hands of consumers on day one, which would seem to imply it would have been sold out entirely in some areas), but by the end of the year there would have been many of the PSP's 2005 shipment of 500,000 available-- I cannot find total sales figures for the year but by December 26 only 360,000 PSP units had been sold, which would have meant nearly half of the PSPs sold were on the first day. Again, the illusion of PSP "shortages" appears to mostly be a result of low availability on the first day, and since such a large chunk of 2005's PSPs weren't sold it seems reasonable to say that even if Sony had had more GPUs, they would NOT have sold any more PSPs.

Having this interview translated by what I assume was a marketing flack probably evened out some of his lunacy. From the times I've seen him at events and the interviews I've read, it seems that he always wears a lizard skin jacket, sunglasses, jeans and boots. He's quite tall for a Japanese guy - over 6 feet with the boots on, so he has a certain impact. But that's just clothes - anyone can dress like a rockstar.

It's the way he interacts with people and the things he says when there's no minder around that lets you know he's totally insane. Check out Tim Roberts' account of meeting him at E3 http://www.livejournal.com/users/108/42763.html, or the Tokyopia interview.

Mind you, when I say that he's crazy, that's at least half-positive. He seems to pretty much do what he wants, and he's been successful enough that obviously Tecmo is happy to let him have his way with things. That means that his games have been designed with only one purpose in mind: making him happy. That's miles better than a crappy movie-license game, or some other forgettable game that's been designed by committee. Ninja Gaiden may be too hard, but it's certainly original - we could use more lunatics like Itagaki.

Hey - you're quite right, Yokoi is generally thought of as the 'father' of Metroid, so I've changed the article to reflect this. I believe that Sakamoto was the character designer on the original Metroid, though, and according to Dylan Cuthbert, who's worked at Nintendo in Japan:

"[Metroid] has always been developed by R&D1 (the dept. Gunpei Yokoi headed up) and designed by the teams who mostly make gameboy titles. Samus was thought up by a friend of mine called Yoshio Sakamoto who is also developing the latest gameboy version Fusion, and also helped direct Prime."

Guess it all depends on producer vs. character designer vs. etc, but I think the amended text better reflects this. Thanks for the heads-up!

There is little doubt that we are coming closer and closer to a "market correction" (and not just in the US, see the "What's Wrong with the Japanese Gaming Industry" series at tokyopia.com). The hows, whens, and whats of the issue, however, are really rather hard to predict. There are a few developments I predict for the future of the "gaming industry", which may or may not directly result from said market correction:

1) Shorter games at cheaper prices - This has already been brought up several times, but I think this will be one of the major themes in the future. If gamers truly are searching for "cinematic experiences", then why do many modern games promising to deliver on this account run 40 hours, when the average movie runs around 2? Shorter games will be the perfect forum for testing the new ways of telling stories that have yet to be developed (and which will most likely be pioneered from smaller and/or open-source independent development houses).

2) A resurgence of older games - Say a big industry powerhouse suddenly finds itself publishing games for a market that is no longer investing in the big-budget rehashes that said powerhouse has been investing, well, big-budgets in. It won't take too many $20 million dollar investments to flop before the company starts hemmorhaging. The answer? Tapping into the incredible backlogs of intellectual property that the company has at its fingertips, possibly stretching all the way back to the 8th bit generation. What better way to recoup on failed development investments than by re-releasing older products with little development investment required? This would mean that we finally see legal emulators released on new-generation consoles (what a major coup for Nintendo, if they were to suddenly to gain a huge chunk of Sony's marketshare simply by releasing an official SNES emulator and working with developers to ensure quality re-releases!)

3) Gaming will find its Voice - Maybe not directly related to the Crash, one development that is certain will be a rising interest in looking at video games from an "academic" perspective. Institutions such as the IGDA and publications such as Game Studies are heralding a new age of vdeo gaming discussion, criticism, and theory. And as we well know there have been several calls-to-arms among the video game journalism crowd (which the quality members of will also help to fuel the desire among gamers to get their hands on some of the older games through their nostalgic advocacy of previous classics). It is only a matter of time before a common language for game theory is developed. After that, the sky won't even be a limit!

4. Innovation based on older technologies - If you were thinking this category is just an excuse to throw out some links to Tenebrae screenshots, well, you were right (and stop reading my mind already!). Do yourself a favor and feast your eyes on some of these (Tenebrae) and these (Tenebrae2). These engines are based off the GPL'ed Quake 1 source, people! I mean, OMFG! T2 could be on par with Doom3 (in terms of capability, if not performance...yet), and it is _open-source_! Under the _GPL_! Which means it can only keep getting better! Alright, I better stop here or else I'll exceed my quota of exclamation points...

5) Convergence of Media - Check out this excellent article from gamesindustry.biz that contains speculations about Sony's long-term plans. Better believe the PSP will be my "Walkman" once it's released!

Okay, I think that is all I have to say for the moment. I am very excited fo

I was in almost the exact same situation about two years ago. I graduated with degrees in both CS and Japanese and headed straight for the game industry.

Most of the important stuff has already been said, but I'll add a few more comments. First of all, you must start writing games during your free time. A GBA demo is great, but a PC demo is fine too. If you do a PC demo, your work will probably be more impressive if you minimize your reliance on 3rd party APIs like DirectX and OpenGL. On the other hand, if you can demonstrate a knack for quality game design, good AI, and/or good character handling, writing a demo in DirectX won't be detrimental.

Secondly, pick up some books (somebody mentioned the Game Programming Gems series, which are great) about game development and familiarize yourself with common methods and algorithms. This will help you at interview time when they ask you to implement A* on paper or to explain how you would write a 3D renderer on a platform that does not support floating point (like the GBA).

You've missed the Game Developers Conference this year, but if you are still looking next year it is a great place to hand our resumes and make contacts. You can apply to be a volunteer, and they'll give you full access to the conference in exchange for about 20 hours worth of work.

Finally, there is your Japanese skills. If you are interested in working in Japan as a programmer, I should warn you that you'll face lower pay, the annoying Japanese seniority system, and possibly even longer hours than here in the states. However, it can be done, even by foreigners with very little Japanese under their belt. I'd suggest checking out this article (especially the last 1/3rd or so) concerning (among other things) a professional console developer went to work for Sega in Japan. Also, Tokyopia is a great forum run by foreigners with gaming interests in Japan.

One other thing to consider: Many Japanese game companies have American offices, but most of them only localize and distribute games developed in Japan. Do you want to write code, or perform translation/localization? If your goal is code and you end up working in the States, I am sorry to say that you probably won't have many chances to use Japanese professionally.

waka