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House of the Dead EX New games Sega

Sega Japan releases new promo materials for House of the Dead EX

Shaggy 4

hotdexnew

When IAAPA came and went, I was a little surprised to see that Sega didn’t bring House of the Dead EX along as part of it’s showcase. HOTD still holds a good fan following from what I have seen and even though this is much different from any other HOTD game yet, I would think that it would be a good thing to show off. Perhaps we’ll see it at ATEI or ASI next year, if they plan on releasing it overseas. But in the meantime they have released some new promo materials for the game in Japan, which happens to be the first thing I’ve seen about the game in a while. It’s not clear if or what they have changed much of the game itself since JAMMA as it still looks like a collection of mini-party-games with a decidedly more feminine theme but in these promo materials it shows some parts of the game that I hadn’t seen before.

To see the full PDF, click on the link below (link via AM-Net.jp)

[House of the Dead EX Japanese promo materials page] [Discuss on the Forum]

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4 comments
Editor

Looks to be zero interest internationally on this – a Lindbergh gun game, that would compete with Primeval Hunt, Skeet Shooting and RAMBO. Sales dose not want it!

I just wonder if JP is listening to what International wants?

Reply
Molloy

Alot of western gamers absolutely hate anything ‘cutesy’ so this could be a poor choice alright.

Editor: How come operators only seem to buy games that compete with each other? Every time I go to an arcade there’s nothing but lightgun games and sitdown racers. I can’t see why they would have 10 of each, and very little else.

Reply
Shaggy

Not necessarily – this is one game that would go down really well with girls and couples who go to the arcade on dates. While it might not take off in any arcade environment that doesn’t bring in a lot of those people, places like FECs and such might find it a good earner.

I’m not editor but let me answer your question from my perspective. Now personally I have worked hard to make sure to not get a bunch of games from the same cloth. But a couple of reason that could be why you see that so often 1. Light-guns and Racers are generally the best earning games so operators stick with what’s safe. I’ve been told by a few people in the industry that ‘joystick games don’t make any money’. That might vary from location to location but so far from what I’ve seen, it’s mostly true. If you look in a magazine like RePlay where they have earnings reports of games, it’s always the light-guns and racers that are showing up. 2. Because of that, it’s those kinds of games we get and so selection has not been as varied as it could be. It has changed slightly this year with games like Blazing Angels – that uses a joystick and is always a top earning game at my place.

Now I fully believe that they should branch out into other stuff and they are to a point now but it’s going to take some time.

Reply
editor

Wow, this is becoming a habit – people ask me a question on the forum and everyone else answers it for me!

But seriously, Shaggy gave a good observation of the operator perspective. But from the manufactures viewpoint: it is easier to listen to your sales team and just build the same-old-same-old. I too wish an operator would create something called a ‘Game Stack’ where along with the zone of a particular game they would rank them in play order. example:

Gun game zone – having in the stack:
– Time Crisis
– House of the Dead
– 2 Spicy
– Big Buck

This rather than what you get in the current D&B which is a rack of Time Crisis and Ghost Squad cabs.

The manufacturers have however come to a decision in 2008 and that is “you cant trust the sales team to base build on!” That means I expect to see joystick, gun games and even totally new interface games appearing (see our IAAPA coverage in Stinger Monday). This will also mean that sales will go direct and we will see a lot of pink in the salemans life!

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