HOW'S THE XBOX 360 DOING?
I ask this question as frequently as possible: how's the Xbox 360 doing in Japan?
This week's answer is: kind of alright. Same old, same old.
Amazon.co.jp reader reviews for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion are currently clogged with one-star ratings berating the game for having tiny, tiny text, and apparently no option to increase its size. Didn't Dead Rising have this problem in America, like, a year ago? Shouldn't these developers have learned by now? [What size of TV are these people playing this game on? 10”? – ed.]
Or maybe Bethesda was trying to hide how banal the dialogue in Oblivion -- or videogames in general -- is.
Nonetheless, publisher Spike took out a two-page ad in Famitsu this week to promote the game. The ad is very cleverly two pages of solid black, with absolutely no screenshots of any kind. I'm sure secret marketing tactics like this are the chief reason Spike is the number-one games publisher in the world. (Hint: sarcasm.) The "OBLIVION" logo is on the page at the left, and the right page contains a few quotes from Japanese game developers.
Koichi Nakamura, president of Chunsoft and producer of cult-hit sound-novel "Kamaitachi no Yoru" says: "Such freedom! I finally bought an Xbox 360!"
Shinji Mikami, creator of Resident Evil, says: "You're free to do whatever you want in this huge world!"
Goichi Suda, head of Grasshopper Manufacture and producer of Killer 7 and the upcoming No More Heroes for Wii, says "I stole a loaf of bread in someone's house -- and then some guards killed me! This is the future of games."
Those are the only three quotes. And no, I'm not making any of them up.
Just last year, I attended a talk event where Goichi Suda and several friends from Capcom and other game companies played a variety of Western-made games, guffawing at various points. They played Demolition Man on the 3DO and could barely continue speaking. They illustrated the gory differences between Resident Evil 4 and Biohazard 4 (Biohazard is heavily censored to remove the blood and decapitations). Suda was able to rattle off details about the localizations of Capcom's Shadow of Rome and Devil Kings; his enthusiasm for games is on par with Quentin Tarantino's enthusiasm for movies. (It's a shame he's yet to achieve something similar with said enthusiasm.) So I have to wonder if Suda actually likes Oblivion, or if he's just sneering at it. I'm pretty sure there's not enough room in his Wii-game-developing, money-anticipating schedule to actually play a game as huge and deep as Oblivion, anyway.
Then again, Spike, publisher of Oblivion, is also publishing Suda's new game. Hmmm.
HALO 3 ALREADY HAS LOTS OF FANS IN JAPAN -- LITERALLY
Well, Halo 3 is being released in Japan two days after it's being released in the rest of the world. I'm certain my friends will start their online Legendary campaign without me, because they're impatient like that. Oh, well.
Microsoft has stepped up the Halo 3 advertising campaign in Japan, and as of two weeks ago, the company’s been handing out flyers at major retailers -- though not just any kind of flyers: they're fans.
Tokyo, in addition to being the world's largest city, is also a place where people have to walk essentially everywhere. The streets have no names, and many public toilets have no toilet paper, so touts for business establishments hand out packets of tissues containing a map to their establishment, out of a sheer hope that the person will read the map card -- which might also contain a coupon -- before they throw away the tissues. During the hot, hot summer, it's common for retailers to hand out paper hand fans to passersby. Most of the time, these fans have rigid plastic handles to facilitate vigorous flapping.
A fan is more of an advertising tool than a packet of tissues can ever be, making summer a huge season for foot-traffic marketing. When someone is flapping a fan near you on a train, it's hard not to at least glance at them. So even if the product advertised on the fan isn't something that the fan-flapper could care less about, someone in the vicinity might care.
I saw a man -- nearly 90 years old -- flapping a Halo 3 fan the other day, and within an hour of that moment, I serendipitously had the exact same fan for myself. It's just tough paper, with no plastic handle. One side shows three miniscule screenshots of the game, and bears a simple-enough description of what the game is about. The tagline is sharp enough: "The year is 2552. The human race continues its fight against an alien race." They're giving it a low-key pitch as science-fiction. That's good. The ensuing description pitches the game's story as dynamic, and paints its scenario in bold colors. These are the sort of points they need to be hitting. And finally, they toss out the fact that the series has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide to date.
Down at the bottom, fine print reads: "This item is not for sale. (Please use as a fan.)"
With the Halo 1+2 legend pack, or whatever it's called, being released in Japan on September 13th, Microsoft has seen fit to advertise right inside the front cover of Weekly Famitsu. The tag line for the ad is "BELIEVE: Don't believe in heroes. Believe in the future." Hey, at least it's better than "The adventure . . . . . . . begins!" -- which has been used as a tag line for at least three dozen films, animes, or videogames in the past five years.
The one big faux pas I can point out -- since you're just forcing me to be negative -- is what's on the other side of the fan: just a big numeral "3", in Halo font. Microsoft has taken out billboards in Shibuya, Shinjuku, and even at Akihabara's massive Yodobashi Camera, each of them showing the same swirling, cloud sky and the same ethereal numeral "3". Might I suggest that the Xbox-fearing nation of Japan is probably the one country in the world where you don't want to advertise Halo based just on a numeral? This is Japan, where a Famitsu poll asking "Would you like to be able to download movie trailers on the PlayStation Store?" was answered with an overwhelming "No", with one high-school student reporting in by saying "I think Sony should just concentrate on games." It's not like Sony's going to be calling Fumito Ueda away from his ICO followup to direct and shoot a motion picture trailer, for god's sake! Either way, it goes without saying that the average gamer here might not think about things in the most common-sensical Western marketing terms, and if they see a "3" in a font they don't recognize, all they're going to know is that they don't remember a "2" in the same font, and even if they do, they don't remember playing that game, so they shouldn't play the "3", because to do so would be rude.
What makes a typical Japanese movie poster? Characters, I guess. People's faces. Hmm. Halo doesn't have any human faces worth a damn. It's got the Master Chief -- he's kind of iconic, yeah? Put him on there, high-res, holding a gun, with one of his pals piloting a warthog, or something? And put the "HALO 3" in a big, sophisticated comic-book-like burst.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, summer has given up early this year, rendering fans unnecessary. Thanks to a light rain, we're experiencing a renaissance of cool breezes all this week and next. I've turned off the air-conditioner and opened the window at home. I have the afternoon off, and it really would be unbearable to sit in here all day. I think I'll go for a walk -- to the local arcade, and watch people playing that semi-new Dragon Quest card-battling game.
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7012&Itemid=2&limit=1&limitstart=2
