10.08.08
Dropping Bombs
I might be one of the few people who was following it before its release this morning, but if you have an Xbox 360, I’d ask you to spare an eighth of a gig for the Beat’n Groovy demo. Just the demo right now. I have some serious complaints about the game itself, complaints I’ll stash behind the cut, but I want to talk a little bit about the way the game was presented to us, the public.
First off: far be it from me to feel ungrateful about finally getting an English-language release of a Pop’n Music game (even if Konami’s doing everything they can to prevent people from making the connection). Pop’n is, as I’ve always said, a great game, and one that can be enjoyed by a great many people. It’s just that North America had no warning whatsoever that the game was coming. I only knew of the game’s existence back in early August, shortly before the whole Summer of Arcade thing happened, and even that was just based on a rumor report from Bemanistyle. There was no publicity, no fanfare, no nothing. Hell, there wasn’t even an announcement prior to the release– I only found out that it landed today when I saw the report on Major Nelson’s feed. To say I woke up in a hurry would be an understatement.
That’s the big issue here. The game that MN (and by extension, Microsoft) announced on Monday was MLB Stickball. Granted, baseball is slightly bigger than a silly little music game, but you would think that there would be at least SOME prior warning. (The only reason I haven’t picked up the full version yet is because I’m short on points– I spent a little on some Rock Band tracks on Monday, putting me just under the $10 price.) This game is one that Bemani fans, myself among them, have been fervently awaiting since long before it was even a rumor of a rumor. And now it’s here and only maybe three dozen people know. Way to scuttle the series before it gains any kind of NA traction, Konami.
This isn’t the first time Konami’s shown abject antipathy towards the foreign factions of Bemaniacs. The US release of Beatmania was done under what appeared to be extreme duress, was higher-priced, and enjoyed no advertising or even acknowledgement that it existed. (The fact that it was released after Guitar Hero didn’t help matters much either.) DDR games are rapidly becoming unavailable as standalones, as Konami prefers to release only the expensive bundles with the pads; the disc-only releases comes months later, if at all. Arcades are dying, and rather than continue to breathe new life into them with popular machines, it was a knock-down drag-out fight to get DDR SuperNova, and another year until the eAmuse system (which has a lot of potential to revive arcades, but required a little bit of effort on the part of arcade owners) made it over to the US. (Of course, Konami could hardly be blamed for the reason why arcades are doomed over here– that’s another long post, the short answer being location– but withholding new machines certainly isn’t helping matters much.)
It sounds almost crazy to say it, but the company that once thanked the legions of English-speaking DDR fans in the manuals of its games is no longer the Konami we have now. I’m (arguably) not naive enough to think for a second that Konami “cares” about its fans, but it should at least have the common sense to know that releasing a half-assed product is not going to generate nearly as much revenue as doing it right by the people practically begging for its release. There is something else to consider– Konami of America’s target audience might not be the people who have been importing the games and so forth. I can understand that– after all, I’m as guilty as the next guy of importing the games. But if the NA release is a soulless, hollow shedding of the original, you’re not going to win any new fans and run the risk of alienating the people who do like your product.
The bottom line, really, is that Konami tends to be their own worst enemy when releasing anything that’s not Castlevania or Metal Gear. Come to think of it, they really don’t have much else in the way of US releases beyond those two, do they? GH and Rock Band have stolen most of the music-game thunder from DDR and Karaoke Revolution. Silent Hill has a dedicated following, but that’s still a very, very narrow niche. When was the last really good Suikoden game? What about new properties? I think, really, that we have a new gaming axiom, along the lines of “Acclaim releases crap”, “Duke Nukem Forever isn’t coming out”, and “Madden is the same game each year”: “Nobody self-destructs a franchise quite like Konami”.
Anyway. That’s all peripheral to the game itself, most of the details of which are relevant to, like, none of my regular readers. ( So, if you’re interested… » )
Catch you folks soon.