Whil
e this news is a couple of days old already, I contacted Frank Cosentino of Namco (who also is the new head of this dept.) about the creation of Namco Amusement USA’s new Product Strategy Department and what that will mean exactly for Namco as well as operators. what this basically means is that Namco is now focusing extra attention on the development of new product (video & redemption) for the North & South Americas as well as Europe. Specifically in regards to the US, development teams in the US and Japan have “a number of projects on the table for the US market” and on top of that their “…ratio of US developed to Japanese developed has steadily increased. We are already over 50% Namco America product”. So essentially, Namco is ramping up production of product for the amusement sector and there are more games in the making than what we saw out of Japan recently. I also asked about pricing and Frank kindly responded :”Certainly, price is always in issue when considering development for the US. Both our team and the Japanese team is aware of the limitations of the price per play in the US. ” That’s always good to hear so we certainly look forward to seeing what Namco has up their sleeves in the coming months. IAAPA is going to be one show I’ll hate missing.
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why you didn’t ask about tekken 6 BR arcade if they will release it in the usa.
I have asked before and the answer remains no due to costs of the hardware. 🙁 Although my local distributor is carrying the original version for some reason, I don’t know how many others are or if they will find a way to import T6:BR.
I am very glad to hear about any increase in arcade game development. As much as I hate redemption games, if they bring the company the money to allow them to take (afford) more chances with original arcade games then so be it. Hell, if it wasn’t for the success of the Addams Family pinball the Twilight Zone pinball would have never seen the light of day.
Men in suits are amazing. They know how to say so many words without saying anything at all.
I got a question what about the article that say they have started negozination of bringing tekken 6 and street fighter 4 where you found that source.
I aksed Frank about it a couple of times and he said no due to the game being cost prohibitive. I can ask him again to see if the answer has changed although I don’t know what they would be doing with SFIV since it’s not their game.