The idea is (as we all know) nothing new - though many trade members may be surprised how many times it has been tried. Records show that after the Nintendo 1984 ‘Nintendo Vs.’, and 1986 ‘PlayChoice 10’ attempts, efforts included the ‘Arcadia’ (Amiga) system by Mastertronics in 1987, while Microprose tried with their system in 1990 and the ‘F-1 Strike Eagle’ (Microprose 3D) platform later sold to Jaleco. Then there was the Microsoft / Intel ArcadePC debacle (see Stinger #304) that sucked in Acclaim / Gremlin and Infogrames into the possibilities of arcade development.

Now in 2006 we see a number of Asian satellite factories having been given some autonomy to go forth and try and fill the product gap left by the Asian parent fixating on content purely suitable for their home audience. These sales forces have attempted to become AM development teams and gone off searching for content. Meanwhile other manufacturers have started to try and hunt good content to answer a need for new videos.

The autonomy given to the satellite studios has caused a resurgence in the development of territorial-suitable content. The European market has seen the fastest development curve to try and embrace convergent content, reminiscent of the Arcadia rush of the late Eighties. Beyond Infogrames’ and Acclaim’s attempts, the French distributor Avranches has developed content to try and fill a perceived gap in the market, their ‘Rev Limiter’ though unusual, still showed an opportunity for homegrown product.

The consumption of Sammy and the green light to the remaining management structure to look at antonymous development, coincided with the collapse of the aspirations of the Sammy A-Wave to find popularity. SEGA America had actually gone through the process of original development. The results included ‘Rangers Mission’, ‘PigSkins’ and ‘Chicago 1920’, and ‘Extreme Hunting.’ (Ranger Mission and Extreme Hunting would be the only games to receive release from a turbulent development plan.)

SEGA Amusement USA has not been a stranger to the possibility of utilizing PC and consumer content as stocking filler. The previous relationship with Electronic Arts saw in 2000 the ‘NASCAR Racing’ (HIKARU) release that like the A-Wave titles supervised in-house proved uneventful, performing poorly on the streets. This had bred a reluctance to allow original development. -But times change! And, with a shortfall of titles, the satellite manufacturers’ distributors needed something.

With this background in mind, we can see how the move got started towards finding strong consumer titles that can be translated across to amusement. In 2005, an agreement was penned in the UK that saw the three year old PC racing game ‘Ford Racing’ receive its first amusement adaptation. (This title was developed by Hollywood Games, but published by Empire Interactive.). For Empire this was their second amusement foray in recent years, having licensed their pinball PC title ‘Pro-Pinball - Big Race USA!’ to the Spanish manufacturer Recreativos Presas. In working with SEGA, Empire hopes to have found a partner that will take their games to a new audience…though it is expected to be an arduous route to market.

Empire has made no bones that it wanted to increase its market coverage, and sees like EA, that an amusement placement of their prominent brands is a goal worth aspiring towards. The company has been linked to presenting other of their driving games to interested parties towards possible licensing.

Breaking Stinger News - Just as Empire and SEGA revealed their amusement development sources in the consumer games scene revealed that the rosy demean of the UK developer publisher hid a change in strategy. During February it was reported that Empire Interactive was up for acquisition, with a number of US suitors investigating the opportunity of ownership. How this would affect future plans for amusement development was unclear, but illustrated the fragility of the International consumer games scene and why a number were looking at new opportunities.

For the agreement with Empire SEGA Europe developed a special PC platform based on their experience of requirements in this arduous environment. Originally SEGA / Sammy had spoken of their A-Wave being a flexible platform for support by consumer game houses but as only IGS and SNK-P had taken to the hardware this was dropped in favor of a specially adapted PC. In Japan the new LindBergh architecture borrows heavily from the consumer sector using an nVidia PC based graphics architecture to create lush visuals, it the PC software sector has opened up new development opportunities to supply content.

Taking a simple but compelling PC title and applying this to amusement has best been illustrated by the Infogrames (now trading under the Atari name) game ‘BeachHead’. The turret inspired beach blaster was first snatched by Tsunami Visuals and deployed on their TSMO motion system, the company at the time looking at acquiring consumer content for motion arcade deployment - but this game had a life of its own and soon Global VR had released a version of their own for their VORTEX VR arcade platform.

Global VR have not been a stranger to the consumer crossover for amusement. Their VORTEX system had a number of licensed consumer titles ported for the arcade scene, though Beachhead stayed for a time as the benchmark in this type of application. It was however with the licensing of the Electronic Arts, sports core brands to the GVR stable that the possibilities of PC fed content took a further step. The considerable pay-off for the ‘Tiger Woods - PGA Tour Golf’ brand from EA Sports a landmark in the investment from consumer to arcade.

This was soon followed by the other prominent EA brand property ‘Need For Speed’. The taking of the crown jewels of EA software publishing offered EA a unique marketing opportunity. Beyond the revenue from arcade adaptation, the ability for the EA brand identity to be enhanced by placement in the amusement scene offered a greater interest to the marketing component of EA than the deployment of an arcade version.

At a time when the fractured GVR management team was at its lowest, the company took the greatest risk in licensing the prestigious and valuable EA property, towards creating an arcade variation. The ‘Madden NFL Football’ license has been a benchmark in American Football games in the consumer sector and has been a valuable cash cow for the corporation. For GVR to think it could just jump in and made a arcade version - while still trying to address the needs of the previous licenses they had brought seemed doomed to failure.

The top consumer players of the Madden series were drafted to aid the effort to create an arcade version of the seminal football product. The multi-million selling consumer franchise has yet to find its feet in the amusement incarnation and is hoped to be honed to perfection. The mysterious arts that are needed to turn consumer into amusement have proven difficult to master, and EA Sports, who have struck an all-encompassing relationship with GVR, are still reluctant to throw their FIFIA soccer brand into the arcade mix without a concrete game plan.

An example of the over-extension of the management thinking within GVR was seen a few years ago when the company (still deep in development of other titles) entered into an deal to acquire a prominent license from Activision to create a shooting game based on the property. The game was shown to the trade and tested, and performed appealingly. But, plagued by financial difficulties and contractual issues, these efforts were abandoned. Such failures helped sour consumer publishers on the amusement market.

GVR continued to focus on their ability to sniff out the best that consumer has to offer. Also in 2005, GVR inked an agreement with the prominent European publisher UbiSoft. The company has developed an impressive range of First-Person Shooters (fps), as well as prominent brands in the console and PC market. The opportunities for GVR are immense and the fruit of this relationship is highly anticipated.

The embracing of consumer content once again has taken some unusual routes. The Asian market actually spearheaded one application with a licensing craze for fps. The leading developer of this genre - the stalwart of every BANG and LAN site - is Valve, the independent studio has two of the biggest selling PC network gaming environment with their two core brands.

The first acquisition of this consumer content from Valve was Namco Bandai Games, who took the Counter Strike PC tactical weapons combat fps game and created ‘Counter Strike Neo V2’ (Namco M2). This game fundamentally resides on enhanced PC hardware and rugged terminal infrastructure to populate Namco’s experiment into the LAN site business. Through their LEDZONE facility operation the company wanted to license the core content available. Less an arcade conversion of a consumer title, but a hardened arcade application of the basic PC experience - the Asian playing model benefiting from a standardized presentation.

Against this model, Valve’s second popular fps PC title, Half-Life 2, has been licensed by arcade veteran Taito Square-Enix, which has created a true arcade version of their game. Abandoning the PC, the company developed a specialist cabinet with advance interfaces to mimic the keyboard and mouse controls of the original. ‘Half Life 2: Survivor’ (TypeX+) takes Valve into the arcade sector, and Taito takes a gamble to hope that this network, IC Card and NESYS enabled package will find favor with the company’s core audience.

The ultimate crossover from consumer to amusement has been announced in Japan. The popular toy brand developer Takara inked an agreement with Capcom to develop the next generation card game system. Based on the Kid Vending platforms of recent months, Takara and Capcom have created a cross-platform system called NaviLink that allows a special IC Card system to retain information that can be played across multiple platforms. NaviLink will go from GameBoy, Toy and Arcade systems, the special smart cards storing information rather than the older paper trading card process, accessed on supported platforms - a player able to use a character from a GameBoy game on the special Kid Vending amusement system. Takara was once invested in by Konami, and have continued a strong support of amusement trends. Capcom coming back to amusement following crane and token game investment looks to this crossover to support their brands, a MegaMan / Rockman license the first game to be released.

A final area of methodology adoption from console to amusement has been interfaces. Reversing the direction of control interface borrowing from arcade and appearing in home systems (such as the BeMania floor pads, Time Crisis gun vibration or amusement steering wheel force-feedback), a number of cabinets have bowed to player pressure to allow the use of much more acceptable and familiar Joypads (mainly the Dual Shock system - PS2).

As the third gaming generation was eroded by console gaming, so a familiarization with the joystick and button methodology of interface was diluted to the point that the JoyPad penetration proved dominant. The familiarity of the joy configuration a norm against the four-and-five finger spread of the Street Fighter configuration.

Of the most recent of the cabinets, Namco has embraced the need to support player requirements based on their operational background, the Tekken 5 series cabinets employing the ability to use Dual Shocker joypads. This same cabinet has been used by Banpresto for their Dragon Ball Z release. Following on this adaptation of consumer standards, Konami have released their Winning Eleven 2006 cabinet with a joint JoyPad and conventional stick layout, the popularity of the home game carried across to the latest arcade version.

Breaking Stinger News - In an expansion of interest in consumer crossover to amusement - predominately for the market, and brand identification - news has emerged from the consumer publishing scene that continued to reaffirm TSR speculation from 2005 that the consumer games sector was demonstrating the first signs of slowdown. January and February 2006 saw announcement from Electronic Arts (the industry’s largest consumer game developer and publisher) and from Activision of staff cuts. EA announced 10% (over 1,000 members), while Activision announced a 7% loss in workforce. This news coincided with announcement of major financial difficulties at European leading publisher InfoGrames / Atari resulting ion the company selling their internal studios and laying-off 20% of their workforce; while leading US publisher Take Two also revealed that they were in serious straits, and that they were being circled for possible acquisition.

The possibly of merger and acquisition madness has already been charted in the consumer sector, with the UK console publishing sector rife with acquisitions that sees control of this once-prominent market revert to US owners. In particular Code Masters, and Empire have all been linked to purchase by prominent financial houses based in America. However not all of the approaches have proven successful. Sources revealed that Sales Curve International (SCi), a prominent consumer publisher (who purchased Eidos last year), had been sought by EA and Midway Entertainment. The company, which is traded on the London Stock Exchange, saw its share price plummet when these deals had to be abandoned. This underlined a growing worry that the UK consumer scene may be about to crumble under the weight of speculation.

Breaking Stinger News - The completion of the Bandai merger with Namco was marked by a flurry of confusing media announcements in Japan that seemed to contradict previous denials. The confusion is easily explained as multiple divisions that overlap from both operations have to find a level playing field. The merging staffs still face resentments and are still making attempts at “turf protection” regarding various territorial areas.

In one of the most detailed of the briefings given to Asian media, the new structure of the groups was revealed. Bandai Namco Group has been divided into five ‘Strategic Business Units’ (SBU). The new units represent Game Content (home and arcade), Network (mobile phone), Visual & Music Content (distribution of video and software) and Toy & Hobby (toys, model, apparel and others) SBU’s - and the new Amusement Facility SBU. The SBU will manage the amusement facilities operation which will be combined (Namco with their sites and the Bandai Asian LAN business). This will be combined with the resources of the Game Content unit that will comprise the conjoined amusement development groups - along with console development.

This new structure sees Bandai using their strength (and management structure) dominating the toy, hobby and branding units, while Namco’s structure will dominate the amusement facility business. It is however with the game content development that the most drastic reorganization has been applied with the creation of Namco Bandai Games - for the SBU. This name change has already been seen initially on the booth at ATEI (though TSR seemed one of the few sources to spot this!), and now in game flyers and at AOU. Where Sega / Sammy merger in amusement saw the disappearance of the Sammy name, the Bandai name now sees an appearance in amusement (beyond their game vending business).