Former Famitsu Editor in Chief and Kadokawa and Enterbrain head honcho Hirokazu Hamamura is one of the men best positioned to be in the know of what’s going to happen in the Japanese gaming industry, and yesterday he held a special seminar at the YouTube Space Tokyo in Roppongi Hills as part of the the
YouTube Gamers’ Day event.
During the seminar Hamamura-san mentioned that the performance of the PS4 in Japan isn’t as good as expected, and while the numbers aren’t terrible per se, it cannot be denied that they pale in comparison to sales in North America and Europe.
He continued by revealing that despite the fact that the Japanese market is by its own nature dominated by mobile games, talking to a major developer he heard that at a game show there will be a big announcement that could help accelerate Sony’s new console’s local performance.
Hamamura-san did not explicitly mention which game show he was talking about, but he used the anglicized version “gemushou,” which in Japan normally indicates
Tokyo Game Show. Considering that he’s talking about the Japanese market, it would only make sense for the announcement to happen at TGS.
What will the announcement be about? That’s a complete mystery, and while Hamamura-san’s wording seems to indicate a third party developer, he did not give any further details. The most probable theory is a PS4 release of a very popular Japanese franchise, and there are quite a few candidates there, including
Tales of, Persona, Dragon Quest (Square Enix
recently mentioned that the possibility of the franchise returning to Sony consoles exists) and more.
Unfortunately we’ll have to wait for the announcement in order to know for sure.
Source:
Famitsu
