This year was all about the handhelds with Sony’s new PS Vita stealing the spotlight. With only 80 demo machines on the floor, the lines to play the machine were maxed out within 30 minutes of the show opening. Those who were lucky enough to get in line might have waited over 2 hours to actually get their hands on the slick new device. Despite the price drop and recent internet rage against the machine, the Nintendo 3DS was looking strong with a handful of exclusive games on display. The biggest one being Monster Hunter. Although Monster Hunter ( Mon Hun for short) has been a PSP cash cow for Sony here in Japan, it seems that it’s going to be focusing it’s efforts on Nintendo’s systems for the time being. As expected, Capcom had plenty of Mon Hun stuff on display for people to whet their appetites with.

As for the rest of the event, take a look below to see some pictures from the show floor. Thanks for reading and enjoy.

-William Greenawalt
my web page
follow me on twitter: @printisdeadyo

January 15th marked the launch of  “The Art of Yoji Shinkawa” exhibit at the Konami Style Store at Tokyo Midtown in Roppongi. As part of the launch of the event Yoji himself painted a beautiful new painting of Solid Snake (or Big Boss) in front of a small live audience. It was an amazing experience to see such a  gifted artist work his magic in person. If you have a chance, roll over to Tokyo Midtown on the B1 level and check out his work which will be on display until the end of January. If you are lucky, you might be able to see him painting through out the day. It is said he will continue adding onto the painting until the end of the month when it is finished. Just jump in line and you can grab a ticket to check it out. Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the video.

-William Greenawalt
my web page
follow me on twitter: @printisdeadyo

We had a chance to get over to the Nintendo World 3DS show this weekend at Makuhari Messe in Tokyo, Japan. Check out a few video clips below and enjoy the new 2D video 3DS goodness. We will definitely have more video coverage coming very soon.

The Nintendo World 3DS Band playing the theme from world 1-2 in Super Mario Brothers

Biohazard The Mercenaries 3DS game footage

Nintendo 3DS’s Augmented Reality demo video

Street Fighter 4 3DS demo video

-Will
my web page
follow me on twitter: @printisdeadyo

The above video represents pretty much everything we saw (or, had time to see) at Design Festa. The text below represents Ice Block’s collective musings after the event was over.

The Design Festa operates under a deceptively simple mission: to give artists in Japan an open forum in which to make trade of ideas and art. Successful as they are in that mission, what makes Design Festa a truly unique event is the massive scope at which it manifests.

Representing artists, designers, craftsmen and performers of Tokyo, the event has become a nearly comprehensive profile of the state of the arts in Japan. The thousands of booths that fill the floor space are occupied by anyone who can afford them (with groups of friends occasionally banding together and splitting the cost). These booths are filled with all breeds of artist, from the high-school students with designs on becoming mangaka to the retiree enjoying life as a banzai tree gardener and everything in-between.

In addition to the static arts, there are multiple live-painting areas, a digital movie theater, a cat-walk, and stages for live performance. Much like the booths, these are also incredibly well booked throughout the weekend.

In terms of restriction on what types of contents people can bring to the Festa, there are few. Actually, there is only one: “Anyone can take part as long as their work is original”. This hands-off approach from the coordinators creates a situation where the artists are able to bring their best ideas in full force. This strength of creativity makes the event appealing to the general public*.

In fact, the one thing that seems to remain consistent across the entire floor is the ability of the artists to expertly toe the line between handy-crafts and fine art. Attendees would be hard pressed to find an article that is either prohibitively expensive or so tacky as to be undesirable.

The high level of both the quantity and quality of works on display speaks volumes about the city that hosts the event. Tokyo is not host to an “arts community”, a term which carries a certain condescending tone and implies that the creative types operate in some sort of annex. The artists represent an integral part of the city’s infrastructure. And, for now at least, there is no better way to engage with that part of Tokyo than at The Deisgn Festa.

For more information, please go to www.designfesta.com.

* If you are unclear about the delicate nature of the artist/consumer relationship, this video should clear it up.

CREDITS
Music: Justin DiCenzo (www.justindicenzomusic.com)
Narration: Kamasami Kong (www.metpod.com)

(Sometimes, we even make videos. -Jesse_)

As always, The Metropolis Glitterball in Tokyo is the hottest way to celebrate any holiday. In 2010, The Halloween Glitterball was held at two venues, F-Bar and Vanity. With drinks flowing, the guests in extravagant costumes, and prizes around every corner, this was certainly a party to remember.

Enjoy the video and we hope to see you at the next great Metropolis party.

Video shot & Edited by Metropolis Media
Music by Shayning (http://www.shayning.com)

Welcome to the awesome world of Social Media. Don’t believe that it’s awesome? Check out this video that will get you mega-pumped about it.

Seems pretty exciting, doesn’t it? Lots of fancy numbers floating around. I guess your company better get involved.

But, wait. Slow down. Hold on. Take a closer look at that video. It’s 90% meaningless. The sentences appear solid when they are dancing to a shiny FatBoy Slim beat. But, the majority of the information is fundamentally meaningless. While some of it is useful, most isn’t. Let’s take a look.

Meaningful Information

The following information is complete and as useful as it can be.

iPod application downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months

Wiki is an Hawaiian term=Quick

Wikipedia has over 15 million articles

78% of these articles are non-English

24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation.

Inappropriate Comparison

The following information is useless due to the only tangential relationship between the things being compared.

Years to reach 50 million users:
Radio 38 years
TV 13 years
Internet 4 years
iPod 3 years
Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year
The initial criteria for comparison is how long it took to reach 50 million users however the criteria for Facebook is different, mentioning how many users it added in a year without clarifying what year these users were added. That is to say nothing of the fact that Facebook is the only free item on that list.

If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 3rd largest.
Yet QQ & Renren dominate China
Facebook is software for social networking around the world. QQ is instant messaging software targeted at the Chinese market. The comparison isn’t very meaningful.
Renren is a social networking service, which makes the comparison servicable. Unfortunately key data is missing like what percentage of what populations are signing up for these various services.

Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of
Sweden, Isreal, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, Panama
How Twitter followers can meaningfully be compared to populations of countries is not explained in this video.

Incidental Statistic

The following information is useless because it is identifying instances without giving meaningful context.

Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30 years old. (one side of 30 has to have a higher population)

50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook (some service is going to pull the largest data stream)

The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females (some demo has to be the fastest growing)

While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube (no info regarding viewership or response)

There are over 200,000,000 blogs (no information regarding maintenance, readership or reader response)

25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content (no info regarding click-through or user interest)

34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands (no info regarding readership or reader response)

78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
Only 14% trust advertisements (no info regarding actions taken on this trust)

Undefined Terms

The following statistics are meaningless because key terms are undefined. Culprit terms have been highlighted in bold.

96% of Millennials have joined a social network. (Are the social networks in question only digital or do they include real-life social networks like after school activities?)

Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S. (What kind of traffic? Hits, unique visitors, human users, page views, data transfer?)

Social Media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the Web. (This video fails to define Social Media)

1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. met via social media.

Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world. (What makes a search engine large?)

Studies show it’s as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica. (What studies?)

US Department of Education study revealed that online students out-performed those receiving face-to-face instruction… (In what areas?)

80% of companies use social media for recruitment.

Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI. (What defines a traditional campain?)

90% of people skip ads via TiVo/DVR. (All people or just owners of TiVo/DVR? What about internet viewers? What about iTunes renters or purchasers?)

Some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
Instead they are distributing:
eReaders iPads Tablets (What universities? Are the students required to have an e-mail that isn’t given to them by the school? Do they have the option to sign up for a school e-mail address? Does this decision regarding affect day-to-day campus life? If not, what is the significance?)

Questions, Quotes, Commands, and Meaningless Bullshit

Questions provide no information. Quotes should not be taken as researched information. Commands do not provide information. Many sentences that appear meaningful at a glance are actually devoid of information on closer inspection.

Is Social Media a Fad?
Or the biggest shift since the industrial Revolution?

“We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we do it.” -Erik Qualman

Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passe

What happens in Vegas stays on Facebook, Twitter, Renren, Kohtakte, flickr, YouTube

If you were paid $1 for every article posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour. (There is yet no economy or occupation that operates under this kind of model)

Word of mouth World of mouth

We no longer search the news, the news finds us…
We will no longer search for products and services they will find us via social media

imagine what this means for a bad costumer experience

People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them.

Do you like what they are saying about your brand?

Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate

Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men.
Listening first, selling second

The ROI of Social Media is your business will still exist in 5 years

Still think social media is a fad?

CONCLUSION 1: Social Media is a buzzword surrounded by other buzzwords. Like most of the experiences generally classified under the Social Media umbrella (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogging), it’s a lot of pomp backed by very little circumstance.

CONCLUSION 2: Fatboy Slim is the shit.

So, anyone out there want to tell me why I’m a moron?

The industry greats all had their stages and booths this year as usual. Square-Enix, Konami, Capcom, Level 5, Sega, and many more. All of these companies seemed to using twitter to their advantage with key industry folks tweeting when events were happening at their booths so people not only at the convention could make their way over, but so that people around the world can see what’s happening, via twit-pics galore, in real time. I think we were seeing the next phase of marketing being truly utilized. Not yet mastered, but at least realized.

I had a great time chatting it up with Ex-Kojima Productions and now Microsoft industry favorite Ryan Payton, as well as renowned  soft bank model Dante Carver about games, comic books, clunky controls in modern games, and the state of Japanese gaming in general. I also want to give a big shout-out to 8-4 ltd. for throwing a great Pre-TGS party in Roppongi this year. It was a great place to gather some of the best gaming, writing, localizing, and blogging geniuses in the land of the rising sun. They had a great turn out and it was a wonderful way to start the TGS week. Thanks guys! Follow their twitter here @84play

Instead of putting together a regular video with our footage from this year’s Tokyo Game Show 2010, we decided to do something fun. If you grew up in America in the 80′s, you know what kind of video we were going for. If you didn’t, you will still enjoy it anway. As always thanks for stopping by and enjoy the video!

cheers,

Will
follow me on twitter: @printisdeadyo

We were recently invited to a reception celebrating the acquisition and planned distribution of Niki Caro’s new film, The Vintner’s Luck. Niki Caro is the director of Whale Rider and North Country, two films which have collectively won and been nominated for more awards than my fingers have the strength to type. Judging from the trailer, I would say… You know what? Let’s just watch the trailer together:

It seems to be about a muscular & cocky young vintner who  seduces all walks of life, from garden maids to baronesses, with his brazen confidence and wine that might literally be described as “divine”. Sounds good to me.

Will and I have made public the limits of our knowledge when it comes to wine, be it red or white. The best we can do is put the wine in our mouth and drink it. If we are happier afterward than we were before, then we consider the wine to be good. The reception was appropriately stocked with wine that passed our rigorous tests. So, if you ever see bottles of the following, you would do well to drink them right up:

Waitaki Braids Pinot Noir
Lawsons Dry Hills Sauvignon Blanc

Unfortunately, the Lawsons Dry is not currently available at Lawson’s Conbini, however appropriate the match-up might seem on the surface.

We were lucky enough to meet Niki Caro during the reception, who was a lovely woman. We snapped off a couple pictures on the trusty iPhone (sorry for the low-light).

Us with Niki standing by a poster for her film.

Between glasses of wine, we took time to admire some of the fine art decorating the embassy.

Here we are with Niki and the New Zealand Ambassador! Huzzah!

We are really looking forward to the films debut in Japan. While a specific date hasn’t been announced, the distribution company did promise an October premiere at the Bunkamura Theater in Shinjuku. See you there!

Jesse_
media@metropolis.co.jp

Metropolis Media was recently called to in to do some photos for the feature article, Man of the Moment. The full article can be found here:

http://metropolis.co.jp/features/feature/man-of-the-moment/

Inside the issue, there are 2 photos from the shoot. But, what happened to the others? Well, they ended up in this video.

As always, thank you for reading.

Jesse_
jesse@metropolis.co.jp

Here are those video:

If you find yourself to be the kind of person who is interested in learning dance, yoga, or hula hoops, than you couldn’t do much better than checking their site and familiarizing yourself with their schedule. Or, maybe you just want to surround yourself with people who are experts at many varieties of kisses.

Enjoy your weekend, kids. But, don’t forget – Your homework is still due on Monday.

Jesse_
media@metropolis.co.jp