You’re probably wondering what the hell I mean by that. Let me see if I can explain.

I guess the main crux of my point is that put simply, the traditional Japanese gaming market is in the toilet. Sales for every system, even the mighty Wii, have been consistently sluggish over the last few months, especially in comparison with sales abroad. We’re not at the point where the 360 is probably going to sell more hardware in the US monthly than the Wii does in Japan monthly. Let that boggle your mind for a minute. The Wii had steam in Japan, but now it seems like it’s starting to lose it. Do I think that this means the Wii fad is over? No. But I’m beginning to think that the home console age in Japan is dying. The PS3’s sales have been up lately, coinciding with Hot Shots golf, but they’re still not good, and nothing seems to be pulling the console out of a slow drift elsewhere as the price cut for the old 60GB model lost most of its momentum after the first month. Not only that, but the PS3 has always been cheaper in Japan than anywhere else, and the country still can’t get themselves to gravitate toward it in any way even resembling their enthusiasm of the past for the brand.

So what does this theory have to do with TGS? Well, when people are afraid (and traditional Japanese publishers should be), they seek safety and the comfortable, and that is exactly what I’m seeing from the majority of Japanese publishers at TGS. If you look at the games on the show floor, there’s little different or surprising there; in fact, do a little digging for the list of coverage of games for Tokyo Game Show 2001, and it’s actually startlingly similar – right down to Metal Gear Solid playing a role as the game everyone wants to hear about for a Playstation console. We’ll see if there’s a continuation of the trend this year, but attendance has been lower every year for the event as well, as many otaku attend the event to get their hands on more anime memorabilia, and the rest of the country is less and less interested.

Finally, even the games themselves frequently speak to desperate moves in different directions by Japanese publishers to remain relevant: we have White Knight Story, a game whose visual design has become more westernized than ever, as well as the Last Remnant and No More Heroes, both games that seem to appeal to a western sensibility more than a Japanese one. Then there are the publishers who aren’t sure where their development should be directed, as Keiji Inafune tells Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft that although Dead Rising was a major success in the west, its poor sales in Japan have caused company executives to put a sequel to the title on the backburner.

Then you have the staunchly pro-PS3 stances held by both Square and Konami with their biggest guns, with trailers for Final Fantasy XIII showing prominently “PS3 only” and a Konami representative telling 1UP’s Shane Bettenhausen that they hope Metal Gear will “transfuse life into Sony’s war machine, the PlayStation 3”. Why would these companies place so much emphasis on the PS3 when the 360 holds such a massive install base advantage and a now ridiculous attach rate (somewhere around 7 games per console)? Because the 360 is never going to succeed in Japan. For a combination of reasons that are both cultural on the part of the Japanese and clueless on the part of Microsoft Japan. And if the 360 will never make a dent in Japan, then Japanese game developers who are terrified of competing with Nintendo on their own platforms for game sales have no choice other than to throw all they can behind Sony if they want the Japanese home console market to continue to be viable. This is why even with multiplatform games, the PS3 version is what people will see on the TGS floor.

The question is, will they be able to make it work? It seems like there’s a lot more excitement for Metal Gear Solid 4 over here (although the games generally sell better in Japan), while Square is hedging their bets with the aforementioned Last Remnant, a multiplatform game, and is releasing remakes of the Final Fantasy series on DS, while creating cell phone spinoffs of Kingdom Hearts and Parasite Eve. Japanese developers want the PS3 to succeed so they can sell games, something they can’t do on a non-selling 360, and something they can’t seem to do well amidst first party competition on the Wii and DS.

Because of this, I had to violently mask my sexual arousal at the leaked screenshots from the Japanese Xbox site for Ninja Gaiden 2, which feature even more outrageous ninja antics, including dismemberment (arms AND legs!), decapitation, and disembowelment by sword, axe, and FUCKING WOLVERINE CLAWS.

As a matter of fact, why hasn’t Tecmo gotten the license for a Wolverine game? Microsoft quickly pulled the page offline, but the damage was done, and the “surprise” was somewhat spoiled I suppose for one of Microsoft’s big Pre-TGS announcements. But really, who cares? It’s coming, it’s coming reasonably soon, and unfortunately for those who went with a PS3 instead, this time it’s being published by Microsoft, which limits its potential to migrate to the black behemoth.

So aside from claws, what else is new?

We don’t have the full details just yet, but we were able to pick up some early information. Perhaps as a way to counter many of the complaints about the series’ difficulty, one of the central gameplay changes is a new health system that will automatically heal players to a certain extent. We don’t know exactly how this system will work, but it seems to be similar to Halo 1′s setup where a certain portion of your life will recharge if you can stay out of trouble for a few moments, but another portion of your life (your “armor,” to continue the Halo comparison) will remain missing until you make it to the next save point.

Between those save points, you’ll bounce from New York to Tokyo to the Netherworld, and as you can see in the new screenshots from the game, come across an area called the Aqua Capital with gondolas and a river running through the center of town. It’s hard to say much definitively about the game’s New York appearance, but a “stage select” screenshot released by Microsoft suggests that the Statue of Liberty will make an appearance.

I’m actually a fan of the idea of something of a stamina recharging mechanic for the title, as buying elixirs over and over again was one of the few really tedious aspects of the last game. But knowing Team Ninja, this also probably means the enemies will be even more aggressive/dangerous. Since I’m at work, I’m trying not to embarass myself with the visual manifestation of my lust for this game. Suffice it to say though, I’m excited. Release is expected in the second half of 2008.

-Aegies