Japan posts(Subscribe to this feed)

Sony Japan has just announced the goofiest, but most interesting DVR device since the TiVo. torne (yes, lower case, and pronounced "torn-eh") is a USB TV tuner that connects to the PS3 and allows users to watch, search, and record television through that system. DVR'd shows can be saved either to the PS3's hard drive or a USB-connected external drive. The device can record even while the PS3 is engaged in a Blu-Ray or game. Shows can also be watched on a PSP using Remote Play or transferred to a Memory Stick.

torne will be available separately this March for ¥9,980 ($108.78) or bundled with a 250GB PS3 for ¥42,800 ($466.52). No release has been announced in any other region, though Sony has already released the PlayTV, a different TV tuner peripheral, in Europe.

Longing for another chance to furiously draw circles around monsters? Good news, a third Pokemon Ranger game for DS is on the way. Serebii reports that the latest issue of Japan's Corocoro Comic features the first look at Pokemon Ranger: Hikari no Kiseki (Path of Light), which, like the others, puts the player in the role of a Ranger equipped with a "Capture Styler" that lets you draw energy circles around Pokemon to trap it.

This third entry takes place on an island setting and features tropical Pokemon like -- we're totally not making this up -- Ukulele Pichu. You'll be able to use "Ranger Signs" to summon certain Pokemon that impart new abilities, in addition to the existing "Poke Assist," which essentially adds elemental damage to your Styler.

Japanese gamers will be able to round up Hikari no Kiseki on March 9.

[Via Andriasang]

As usual, Famitsu scans have beaten official sources to the punch, with scans of the magazine's reveal of Armored Core 5 now online. The article reveals that AC5 is a PS3/360 game, built, according to Siliconera, on the concept of "mayhem-like mecha action."

The "mayhem" is the result of the new "more complicated" three-dimensional stages, featuring many different heights from which to attack. These stages will be populated by smaller mechs -- the robots will come in at around five meters tall, instead of ten as in previous Cores. The smaller mechs will be more maneuverable, according to Andriasang's summary of the article, and able to traverse smaller areas of the environments, and even hide in some corners.

Sony announced that the Japanese release of Gran Turismo 5 has been delayed from its unspecified March date to an undecided future date, to be announced later. Sony apologized for the inconvenience, citing some kind of "circumstances" around the release date. No concrete information was provided about what exactly caused this drastic move.

Things seemed to be looking up for Gran Turismo 5 for a while. Sony announced a March release for Japan and a tentative summer release for North America, sent out a very popular demo, and even revealed the North American box art design. But this latest move suggests that Polyphony's latest racer may not be as close to the finish line as expected.

[Thanks, Copland and Niko]

We all know a brand-new Nintendo handheld is coming eventually, but in what seems like an effort to detract from the buzz surrounding such a device (and likely to get some of that buzz back on the latest DS revision, the DSi XL), Nintendo has issued a statement regarding reported comments from Iwata on a new handheld -- what we've affectionately dubbed the "DS2." Charlie Scibetta, Nintendo of America's senior director of corporate communications told Kotaku, "Mr. Iwata did not make any comments regarding the functions of Nintendo's future hardware systems," adding that Iwata's statements as reported by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper were "misinterpreted."

As for those statements, it seems to be a given that Nintendo would add motion-sensing technology to its next handheld. Looking to ape the Wii's success, the entire industry has moved in the direction of motion-based gaming -- including Microsoft, with Project Natal, Sony, using the PlayStation Motion Controller, and Apple, a direct competitor in the portable market, chiefly with the IPod Touch. And let's not forget, motion control isn't out of the realm of possiblity for the current Nintendo handheld.

Though today is a fairly low-key day for downloads on the Japanese Wii and DSi Shops, there are a few things available that we'd love to see in North America but never will. The Virtual Console has MSX releases of two wonderful shooters, the Gradius/Twinbee/octopus mashup cute-em-up Parodius, and Salamander, which we know as Life Force. The MSX ports are inferior to most other versions, so maybe we can live.

The other programs we desperately want but won't have: the Genius Personal series for DSiWare, which allow you to write a word in English or Japanese (depending on which version you download) and get a translation and definition. Perfect for people who have to read and translate Japanese DSiWare titles all the time!

• Parodius (MSX, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
• Salamander (MSX, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
• atChess Battle Spirits (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• G.G. Series D-Tank (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Artist Ni Narou! MInna ni Nurikai Jukyuu-hen (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)
• Pinball Attack! (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)
• Genius Personal English-Japanese Easy Dictionary (DSiWare, 1 player, 800 DSi Points)
• Genius Personal Japanese-English Easy Dictionary (DSiWare, 1 player, 800 DSi Points)

From Software has been on a roll lately, with the hit Demon's Souls and the well-received 3D Dot Game Heroes. But what of the franchise that people most closely associate with From Software (among people who associate From Software with things) -- Armored Core?

At an Armored Core Silent Line Portable tournament in Tokyo, From Software dated the PSP version of Armored Core: Last Raven for March 4, and (more excitingly) announced a brand-new entry in the mech series, Armored Core 5. No details of the sequel were revealed beyond a release date, though the new AC5 site suggests that more information will be forthcoming January 14 (or when the Famitsu leaks hit). Mysteriously, clicking the big "5" on the site links to a Google search for the word "senjou," which means "battlefield." You mean there's going to be fighting in this mech combat game?

Update: Reader Kenoji has pointed us to some off-screen footage of the teaser trailer shown after the event. It's posted after the break.

We've known that God of War III would be arriving on the Playstation 3 in March for a while now, but Sony has blessed Japan with an actual date: March 26, 2010. There's no official date for the rest of the world yet, but we'll let you know when we see one.

The good news is that it's possible the game could come out earlier in the US, being as it's a title developed right here between the shining seas. But either way, that demo will have to tide you over for a couple more months.

We'd warn you that this new trailer for Heavy Rain is filled with spoilers. Thankfully, it's in a language you probably don't understand: Japanese. With Quantic Dream's PS3-exclusive thriller arriving in Japan next month (quite possibly before America gets the game), this trailer is packed with enough dramatic moments to make us run to Japan to get a pre-order.

[Thanks Jem A.!]

Recent Famitsu magazine scans have surfaced, revealing new Ultra Combos for Super Street Fighter IV's world warriors and friends. As an added bonus, Eventhubs has actually translated the descriptions of the attacks, so you can get a better idea of what you're squinting at. Chun-Li's Kikosho fireball returns, and now Ryu has a "Metsu-shoryuken" -- a super-powerful Dragon Punch, duh. Most interesting, however, is Cammy's new Ultra Combo: the "Cammy Quick Combo" -- or "CQC" -- a counter move.

The Famitsu issue also features images of new alternate costumes for the upgraded fighting game -- Chun Li's, above, is the most visible from the scan. Thankfully, GameTrailers has posted a much clearer, wha-wha-wha-wooorld exclusive look at the costumes in action, along with some of the new Ultra Combos and rival battles, embedded after the break.

[Thanks, Will]

It'd be impossible to discuss Japan's Xbox Live usage stats, recently released by Microsoft (and posted after the break), without pointing to the overwhelmingly Japanese-developed composition of them. Taking first place among the top XBLA purchases of 2009 was last year's Virtual On port -- a game so popular in Japan that it currently holds second place in the region's all-time bestsellers list. Games like Ikaruga and Trigger Heart Exelica populate the rest of the XBLA stats, though Western-developed Castle Crashers notably takes the number one position in all-time popularity.

The sheer Japanosity of these stats is even more apparent in the download numbers for all that other stuff. From demos (75 percent Japanese-developed) to Games on Demand (90 percent) to DLC (also 90 percent), Japanese players clearly have a hankering for homemade games -- even on their Western-developed consoles.

[Via Andriasang]

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has offered the first concrete information about the next DS system -- as in, not the next revision of the current DS, but the true next Nintendo handheld system -- in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. "[It will have] highly detailed graphics," Iwata said, "and it will be necessary to have a sensor with the ability to read the movements of people playing." Sort of like the iPhone, yes, but Nintendo isn't exactly an also-ran in the field of motion-controlled gaming. Iwata declined to specify a release window for this DS2 -- or a better name than our suggestion.

Iwata also addressed potential service changes for both the current DS network and its successor, suggesting that there would be no "monthly service plan" offered for games. He indicated that Nintendo was looking to increase the number of businesses that host DS Wi-Fi hotspots instead of supporting a 3G-like service (à la Kindle or iPhone) for the DS. The "Mac de DS" service Nintendo provides in partnership with McDonald's offers free wireless connections for the handheld, along with exclusive downloadable content.

In Wii news, Iwata dropped one bomb that will delight fans ... and one that will probably initiate eyerolls. First, the good news: The new Zelda game -- sort of revealed at E3 last year -- is scheduled for release by the end of 2010. And now, that other news: The Wii Vitality Sensor, the bizarre biofeedback attachment also unveiled at E3, will be released somewhere in the neighborhood of July, following a press conference about the device.

[Via Kotaku]

Corporate synergy keeps the late "King of Pop" alive, as various divisions of Sony conspire for a special This Is It PS3 bundle. The ¥33,500 ($365) Japan-only set releases January 27 and comes with a Blu-ray movie of Michael Jackson's behind-the-scenes concert film, along with a 120GB black PS3 Slim. No word if this bundle will come with a white PS3 later.

So, let's get this straight: Japan gets a Michael Jackson PS3 bundle, while the US is "blessed" with a Hannah Montana PSP pack? That's bad, come on, you know that's bad. And the whole world has to answer right now, just to tell us once again: that's bad!

[Via Engadget]

2009 looked fairly dire for the Japanese games industry. Now that we're on the other side of the year, we can assess the damage. Andriasang reports Enterbrain numbers claiming that, overall, the market shrank ¥543 billion, a reduction of 6.9% from 2008. Since we're in a Seinfeld-quoting mood today, we might posit that the Japanese game industry had been in the pool.

Hardware sales dropped 13.9%, with the DS unsurprisingly leading among consoles with 4,025,313 million units and the Xbox 360 even less surprisingly at the bottom, with 331,706 consoles sold. In software, the big winner (or smallest loser, we suppose, given the overall tone of the news) was Dragon Quest IX, which sold a whopping 4,100,968 copies -- slightly more than the total number of DS consoles sold in 2009! Final Fantasy XIII managed to make it onto the tail end of the top five with 1,698,256 copies. But if you weren't Square Enix or Nintendo (who had the other three spots on the top five software charts), 2009 was one to forget.

The Japanese Wii and DSi Shops are taking it easy on the first week back after a holiday, with just one WiiWare, one Virtual Console, and two DSiWare games available, quite a change from the massive pileups of previous weeks. The Virtual Console game is the Super Famicom version of Kirby's Star Stacker, an original Kirby-themed puzzle game we received on the Game Boy. And on WiiWare, a painfully adorable ... train simulator?

DSiWare has another G.G. series shmup, and another miniature Paint By DS featuring cats. Pretty mellow week!

• Boku wa Pla-Rail Untenshi: Shinkansen & Joukikansha Hen (1-2 players, 1,000 Wii Points)
• Kirby's Star Stacker (Super Famicom, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points)
• G.G. Series Dark Spirits (DSiWare, 1 player, 200 DSi Points)
• Artist ni Narou! Minna no Nurikai Neko Hen (DSiWare, 1 player, 500 DSi Points)