News

Sammy, the Japanese gaming that tried to merge with Sega last year and already owned around 25% of the company's stock, has bought out the rest of Sega outright for $1.45 billion. The combined will be known as Sega Sammy Holdings.

The company will have a strong presence in all areas of gaming entertainment: console gaming, pachinko, "pachislot" (pachinko/slot machines), amusement, arcade games, and the content services market. Sammy, in fact, is the largest Pachinko machine manufacturer in the world. There are plans to have the company organized into four main divisions by 2007: pachinko and pachislot, amusement and consumer games, media content and network, and miscellaneous. Until that time, Sega and Sammy will continue to run as if separate companies. Sammy's financial strength and Sega's creativity will be the key to the whole company as it predicts an income of $4.4 billion for the fiscal year of 2005


Source: Gamespot

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Hopefully, Sammy will not pull Sega out of the console market. I don't have the exact quote at the moment, but I remember that around the time of the attempted merger last year that one of the high executives of Sammy said that Sega needed "to focus on the arcade market more than home console market."

On the other hand, Sammy's financial strength may allow Sega to devote more resources to their console games than they have been able to as of late.

Full Metal Alchemist, the anime that both Square Enix and Bandai have been working on, is a smashing success in Japan according to Anime News Network.com Already up to episode 31, it has a cast of popular characters, wonderful themes, and unconventional plots, with a new twist on Alchemy that hasn't been seen often, if at all, in an anime.

It's so big that profits from the manga itself are one of the top three sources for all the extra funding that Square-Enix has sitting around, the other two being the recent FFX-2, and Dragon Quest V.

Furthermore, for those of you who haven't had a chance to see it yet, Full Metal Alchemist was licenced at E3, meaning that soon there will be an Americanized version to air on CN this October. Let's hope that it's for Adult Swim, so too much Americanization and editting doesn't need to happen.

Second article source: ign.com

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I really love this anime, and have been watching it since the fansubs first started coming out. I'm glad to see that it's been finally licenced, I've been wondering when that was going to happen. Although I don't have high hopes of CN being nice to it, editting wise, I'm sure that DVDs for the anime will soon follow, as well as translated manga.

Full Metal Alchemist, an excellent anime by Square Enix that has not yet been licenced outside of Japan, has another game based off of it for the GameBoy Advanced.

Although release dates are only set for Japan as of yet, for this summer, it will hopefully come to this continent not long after that.

There are 12 new screenshots courtesy of RPGamer that look promising, showing mostly battle scenes. This game and anime may not be as well known as, say, the Final Fantasy series, but it is definitely worth the attention as a Square Enix game.

Source: RPGamer

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I'm a big fan of the anime series Full Metal Alchemist, and even though I have no plans to get a GBA, I would definitely love to play this game.

Prime time television ratings may have taken a considerable blow from the video gaming industry this season, according to a recent article posted at CNN.com.

Nielsen Media Research reported that viewership among the men 18-34 demographic were down some 10% since last television season. It attributes part of this decline to an expanding video game industry.

Indeed, Sony has noted that over half of its prime time (8 p.m. - 11 p.m.) online gaming community consists of men aged 18-34.

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I largely prefer gaming over television, especially online gaming.
I see online gaming with friends as a social event, and as so it is far more valuable to me than a television program--or its advertisements.

Nintendo boasts, Sony counters.

Nintendo has announced that their stock of Gamecube is starting to sell out in North America. The company has stated that the demand has been so high, particularly considering the holiday season ended months ago, that it is pulling units from other markets to send to the continent. Nintendo representative Perrin Kapaln is quoted as saying, "I'd say about 50 percent of our stores are out."

Last year at this time, Nintendo had to halt GameCube production because of a large overstock. What a difference time and a massive price cut can make.

Sony countered this announcement with one of their own: the 25th million Playstation 2 in North America has been sold. Sony is also proud of the fact that 2.6 of these units have been used online while Microsoft has 750,000 subscribers to Xbox Live.

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I won't be surprised if the Microsoft makes an announcement about Xbox sales figures in the next day or two. If I were rich, I'd add a sales figure to each too.

In an apparent effort to get gamers to play in the great outdoors, Konami has released it's latest GBA title: "Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand."
The Action/RPG title, designed by the creator of the Metal Gear series, requires players to expose their GBA unit to direct sunlight through a small solar sensor contained within the game cartridge. Sunlight both affects key events in the game and provides energy to the game's weapon, a pistol named the "Del Sol."

Boktai sells for about $35 USD, and is available for purchase.
Further information about the title can be found at Konami's Website.

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Go! Outside! Expose your pale skin to the glory of the sun... and... continue your gaming out there!
Or you can sit next to a window as you play.
At least it's been programmed to only "accept" real sunlight: Desklamps, flashlights, and such don't affect the sensor.

Anyway, I'm surprised the technology for the sensor is so compact and cheap enough to warrant mass production on a video game cartridge. And furthermore, the gimmick behind the game is unique. While the game can be played in the absence of sunlight, Konami notes that it becomes significantly harder since players must be conservative in use of their gun's stored energy.