Category Archives: TGS 2008

TGS organizer CESA has reported that day two totals for the event accounted for 24,605 attendees, which beats out last year’s second day total of 24,178.

Day one this year saw 27,434 people walk through the door, compared to day one’s 27,305 in 2008.

Tthe first two days of the show are only open to press and industry insiders, but today and tomorrow the public shall be able to attend.

Total attendance for last year’s show, including all business and public days, was 194,288.

More over on Andriasang.

CESA’s announced the best games of TGS 2008, as you can see here if you can read Japanese. If you can’t, look below:

• Idolm@ster – Namco Bandai – PSP
• Gyakuten Kenji – Capcom – DS
• White Knight Story – Sony – PS3
• Star Ocean 4 – Square Enix – Xbox 360
• Final Fantasy: Dissidia – Square Enix – PSP
• Dragon Quest IX – Square Enix – DS
• Resident Evil 5 – Capcom – Xbox 360/PS3
• Monster Hunter 3 – Capcom – Wii
• 428 – Sega – Wii
• LittleBigPlanet – Sony – PS3
• Yakuza 3 – Sega – PS3
• Let’s Tap – Sega – DS

Thanks, Kotaku.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal at TGS, PlayStation boss Kaz Hirai has issued a note of caution to recent quotes saying the games trade will easily ride the wave of global recession, but has said it will be more resilient than standard manufacturing industries.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say we’re recession-proof, but we expect to be hit much less than an auto company, for example,” he said.

“We expect to do very well in the year-end shopping season.”

Microsoft’s John Schappert added that the financial downturn is likely to make people wary of spending, pointing to recent 360 price cuts as a boon for the system.

“When you look at people, who are certainly more price-conscious than ever, that price is something people are going to be looking at,” he said.

More through the link.

Japanese investment research firm MorningStar has published a paper from TGS quoting a Konami rep saying the firm is looking at moving MGS4 to 360.

We did actually tell you about this in July, but there we are.

“We’re actively looking into a release for the Xbox 360,” the spokesperson apparently said.

Obviously, this sort of flies in the face of Hideo Kojima’s constant claims that the game isn’t possible on the Microsoft machine because it doesn’t have Blu-ray.

We’ll put it another way: “Would you like $500 million, Konami and Microsoft?”

More on IGN.

Speaking to GI at TGS, Bungie PR boss Brian Jarrard has claimed that Bungie only had a vague idea anyone was working on a Halo MMO, and that creating one would be “pretty challenging” thanks to the necessary creation of “a whole new layer of fiction” in the Halo universe.

“They are like our lunchtime discussions at the studio,” he said. “A Halo MMO wasn’t something that at the studio we had a lot of preview on. We’d heard rumblings and on paper, if someone says ‘Let’s take Halo, plus Warcraft, equals dollar signs…’

“So it was interesting when that whole thing came to light, there was more there than we ever really thought there was. I don’t know, we’ve had a lot of heated discussions – there’s a big, vast, rich universe, but then again it’s hard for me to imagine.

“Everybody wants to be Master Chief, they all want to be the Spartan. You’d have to create a whole new layer of fiction and new characters that don’t currently exist – not that it couldn’t be done,” he added.

“I don’t know if I would want to invest and become a Warthog mechanic in a garage, when all my friends were out there kicking ass on the front lines. I’m sure there’s probably enough there to work with where something could of come of it, but I think it would have been pretty challenging.”

More through the link.

According to this Gamespot piece, TGS’s attendance this year was the highest ever, up to 194,288 from the previous record of 193,040 in 2007.

Here’s a b-b-breakdown of people per day through the gates, with last year’s numbers in brackets:

• Day 1: 27,305 Visitors (29,783 Visitors)
• Day 2: 24,178 Visitors (32,390 Visitors)
• Day 3: 71,639 Visitors (64,795 Visitors)
• Day 4: 71,166 Visitors (66,072 Visitors)
• Total: 194,288 Visitors (193,040 Visitors)

TGS is clearly the show that keeps on giving. GameInfoWire’s posted up a new set of shots for Star Ocean: The Last Hope, and extremely pretty they are too.

No fixed date for this yet, aside from “2009″. Take a look.

According to this Kotaku report, public attendance at TGS was up over 7,000 compared to last year on the show’s first non-business day.

As reported yesterday, trade attendance for the show was down around 11,000 year-on-year.

More through the link.

According to this Kotaku story, trade attendance for TGS has fallen again, dropping around 11,000 for the business days compared to last year.

Around 27,000 people attended the first day of the event, with just over 24,000 hitting the second day.

No figures are in yet for consumer attendance.

More through the link.

Speaking to Kotaku, Capcom producer Ben Judd has said a Bionic Commando movie may not be the stupidest idea in the world.

“I mean, we’ve already got action figures and a comic book; movies are a definite possibility,” he said.

“Capcom are active IP holders, they do a lot of turning stuff into movies, so yeah.”

That’s be nice, isn’t it? More through there.

Speaking to EG at TGS, Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida’s said the firm wants 360 to do well in Japan as success for the opposition will help switch the Japanese public onto HD gaming.

“I like to see people here in Japan showing interest in high-definition gaming and more sophisticated gaming experiences,” he said.

“In terms of realistic-looking graphics and smarter AI, they haven’t really shown the appetite for what this generation of gaming can offer. I’d really like to see both PS3 and 360 succeed here.

“What Microsoft is offering and what we are offering are closer, compared to what other platforms are offering. Because of that commonality, the new games coming out on 360 and PS3 help to get consumers more interested in this generation of gaming.”

There’s a full interview through the link. Thanks, GI.

On Kotaku, especially for Blerk. As reported, the latest in the Monster Hunter series is looking pretty special in the graphics department.

Take a look. No guarantee of a western release as yet.

Xbox production head Aaron Greenberg has claimed that the Japanese games publishing market has undergone a “tremendous shift” towards Xbox 360, with third-party publishers now looking to the Microsoft machine to get out of Japan and into the West.

“I think there’s been a tremendous shift,” he told Major Nelson after the first day of Tokyo Game Show.

“Never before have I seen in the eight years I’ve been coming to TGS, this shift, frankly, from the PlayStation brand to Xbox 360 among third-party publishers. We’re the platform they’re looking to to help grow their franchises around the world.”

Greenberg added that Japanese 360 sales have rocketed year-on-year, thanks, he said, to price-cutting and RPG exclusivity.

“What’s interesting of late is the amazing momentum we’ve seen coming out of the Japanese market,” he said. “Our sales are up year-over-year: last month’s sales were up 500 percent. We not only saw tremendous sales growth; we outsold PS3 for the entire month, week after week.

“While we’ve had tremendous success globally, I don’t think anyone anticipated we’d see the kind of sales results we have seen in Japan, and I think it’s the result of great content and great pricing.

“We’ve had big, exclusive RPG one after another, and the great thing is that we’ve shown that not only have we launched things like Tales of Vesperia and Infinite Undiscovery, but we’ve got The Last Remnant coming next month, we’ve got Star Ocean 4 coming only to Xbox 360 starting in spring.

“So for Japanese consumers here, and for Japanese publishers, we’ve never had the type of line-up that we have here.”

There’s an audio interview with Greenberg through the link. Have a listen.

An exasperated Aaron Greenberg has flatly denied there are any plans to add Blu-ray to the Xbox platform. Seriously: it’s not happening.

“We have no plans to integrate Blu-ray into the Xbox experience,” the Microsoft production boss told Major Nelson in Tokyo in response to recent rumours that a contract had ben awarded to create an external Xbox 360 Blu-ray player.

“We believe that we shouldn’t force people to pay for things they don’t want. We also believe that the future’s digital, and that’s why we’ve invested in a massive library of entertainment content, that’s why we’re bringing things like Netflix to members in the US, that’s why we’re growing our library in Europe, that’s why we’re adding all type of entertainment experiences around the world.”

The exec went on to ridicule the format, saying that years from now there’ll be an expression, “It got Blu-rayed,” and that, “It’s pretty clear it’s not the next DVD”.

“And Blu-ray: who knows? I’ll tell you one thing: if you look at retail sales and availability, there’s not a lot there, and what is there is at a premium,” he said.

“No one knows what Blu-ray will be. It’s pretty clear it’s not the next DVD, right? The days of one physical format being the standard are gone.

“I went to Sony’s booth, and it used to be that their whole booth was Blu-ray. It just keeps shrinking down. Now it’s just this little corner and there’s no one there and it’s like, there’s a heart sign and it’s got ‘Blu-ray’ and some movies. It’s interesting.”

There’s an audio interview through the link, recording last night after TGS.

Rare’s released its set of new Banjo images from TGS, as seen after the break. We’re very much looking forward to finally getting our hands on this. It’s out on November 14 in Europe.

More »

Kotaku’s posted up a video of Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux explaining the combat system in Fable II, and it’s all looking very swish. We feel as thought we’ve been writing about this game for our entire lives, so it’s good to see it’s working, and all.

Take a look.

Joystiq’s posted some lengthy impressions of a new Final Fantasy Versus XIII trailer being shown at TGS. Snip:

We see the prince character wearing a casual, all black suit. This is rendered with the in-game engine, and the graphics look as smooth and appealing as the main FFXIII title. He climbs marble stairs up to a loft-like art gallery. There he meets the blonde woman revealed previously wearing a black dress and a small white top. This time she’s seen in a white cocktail dress. The two are talking but through Japanese subtitles as there doesn’t appear to be any voice work done yet – or, Square Enix purposely took it out for some reason.

The two characters continue to talk in the art gallery. There’s an Amano-styled painting hanging on the floor behind the female character. They appear to be having a friendly chat. It’s easy to assume that these two could be lovers; there’s no doubt they’re quite close to one another.

More through there.

On CVG. These came out yesterday, but we drowned a bit and they slipped through the gaps. We apologise. Bionic Commando’s out next year for 360 and PS3.

Bungie’s defended the choice of announcing Halo 3 Recon at TGS, saying it’s a good show to get the game out in the open thanks to global media interest.

“TGS is a game show where the worldwide media does descend on it,” said developer Luke Smith, talking to the Guardian.

“Regardless of the product’s individual success here, the simple fact is that this is a place where the world’s eyes are watching. And where we have that opportunity, that’s a great place for Bungie to announce a game.”

Bungie PR director Brian Jarrard added: “I would agree, and I think it happened to work out also nicely that the theme of TGS this year seems to be the globalisation of gaming.

“It’s nice to be able to bring the western games over here, and I believe Xbox as a platform is doing very well over here recently as well.”

There’s a ten-minute video interview through the link.

Massive update on the US PS Blog here on a White Knight Chronicles presentation at TGS yesterday, in which producer Kentaro Motomura explains that the stellar-looking RPG’s main differentiator is the protagonist’s ability to transform.

Character transformation were shown in the demo, including the White Knight, the Black Knight, and the Dragon Knight, which has a pair of wings, all of which are seven metres high.

There’s a lot of detail through there, and some lovely screens, so do take a look. Game’s out for PS3 in Japan on December 25, with no date yet fixed for the West.