Bemanistyle [dot] com Forums - View Single Post - Guitar Freaks ASC From Play-Asia?

TranceDance · 12-06-2007, 11:45 AM

I understand that they don't want to make a bunch of controllers that won't be sold, but at the same their business practice leads to a self-fullfilling prophecy of "we can't sell all of these." They're available only from the Konamistyle website, completely cutting off retail sales and casual players who may not even know they exist since they haven't seen them in stores. They don't offer them for sale on any website other than Komanistyle.jp eliminating international markets, which make up a large part of Bemani's fanbase, and reselllers, which are as big in Japan as anywhere else. There is absolutely nothing preventing them from offering ASCs on the same preorder basis on websites in North America and Europe with an added surcharge for having to print out a shipping label not in Japanese and making the buyer pay the shipping costs. In a worst case scenario the webmaster in each region has to take 10 minutes out of his salaried day to add it to the online storefront and no one clicks on it.

Taking it one step further, the American audience has shown they are willing to support guitar games with the success of Guitar Hero. Furthermore a large portion of that audience purchases a more expensive, more high end guitar from a third party. It is perfectly logical to conclude that at least a few hundred out of those hundreds of thousands would be interested in a guitar game with a vastly superior guitar.

There is also an increased demand from a lower price to be considered. By selling directly Konamistyle would only be charging the actual cost of the guitar - presently US$179.27 - plus whatever extra they would add in for transportation costs. Sales outside of Japan now are being made only to the most hardcore of players due to cost. The last used ASC I saw on Yahoo Japan sold somewhere around 38,000 yen ~ US$341.93. On top of that someone in the states is going to have to pay off a proxy bidding service to actually make the bid since the seller of the auction won't ship it outside of Japan (wouldn't want to print out a shipping label and go to the post office if it would make the item sell for a higher price after all). Once a processing fee, handling fee, domestic shipping fee, bank fee, commission, etc. has been added that's another $60 at an absolute minimum. On top of that shipping from Japan will run another US$50-60, bringing the total to right around $400 for a used controller during the brief periods of time when a buyer is lucky enough to be able to buy one at that price. You'd have a difficult time of convincing me that there wouldn't be substantial demand for the product at half that price if a casual fan could walk into any Gamestop, Best Buy, Micro Center or just about any other store and start playing the game with it. They could even just have one ASC for the demo and do special orders on them.

I'm only looking at it from the standpoint of Konami attempting to maximize their profits. Japanese companies have always been extremely reluctant to do things that will easily make them money (like making their products availalbe to international markets) but not blink an eye at ventures that have little to no chance of returning the investment (like HipHopMania - taking a suburban game and rebranding it for an urban audience or Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - the numbers speak for themselves).

12-06-2007, 11:45 AM	#8
TranceDance //bemanistyle::[User] TranceDance is offline Join Date: Nov 2007 TranceDance's Collection Posts: 31 Marketplace Rating: 1 Tokens: 438.80 Bank: 0.00 Total Tokens: 438.80 Donate Tokens	I understand that they don't want to make a bunch of controllers that won't be sold, but at the same their business practice leads to a self-fullfilling prophecy of "we can't sell all of these." They're available only from the Konamistyle website, completely cutting off retail sales and casual players who may not even know they exist since they haven't seen them in stores. They don't offer them for sale on any website other than Komanistyle.jp eliminating international markets, which make up a large part of Bemani's fanbase, and reselllers, which are as big in Japan as anywhere else. There is absolutely nothing preventing them from offering ASCs on the same preorder basis on websites in North America and Europe with an added surcharge for having to print out a shipping label not in Japanese and making the buyer pay the shipping costs. In a worst case scenario the webmaster in each region has to take 10 minutes out of his salaried day to add it to the online storefront and no one clicks on it. Taking it one step further, the American audience has shown they are willing to support guitar games with the success of Guitar Hero. Furthermore a large portion of that audience purchases a more expensive, more high end guitar from a third party. It is perfectly logical to conclude that at least a few hundred out of those hundreds of thousands would be interested in a guitar game with a vastly superior guitar. There is also an increased demand from a lower price to be considered. By selling directly Konamistyle would only be charging the actual cost of the guitar - presently US$179.27 - plus whatever extra they would add in for transportation costs. Sales outside of Japan now are being made only to the most hardcore of players due to cost. The last used ASC I saw on Yahoo Japan sold somewhere around 38,000 yen ~ US$341.93. On top of that someone in the states is going to have to pay off a proxy bidding service to actually make the bid since the seller of the auction won't ship it outside of Japan (wouldn't want to print out a shipping label and go to the post office if it would make the item sell for a higher price after all). Once a processing fee, handling fee, domestic shipping fee, bank fee, commission, etc. has been added that's another $60 at an absolute minimum. On top of that shipping from Japan will run another US$50-60, bringing the total to right around $400 for a used controller during the brief periods of time when a buyer is lucky enough to be able to buy one at that price. You'd have a difficult time of convincing me that there wouldn't be substantial demand for the product at half that price if a casual fan could walk into any Gamestop, Best Buy, Micro Center or just about any other store and start playing the game with it. They could even just have one ASC for the demo and do special orders on them. I'm only looking at it from the standpoint of Konami attempting to maximize their profits. Japanese companies have always been extremely reluctant to do things that will easily make them money (like making their products availalbe to international markets) but not blink an eye at ventures that have little to no chance of returning the investment (like HipHopMania - taking a suburban game and rebranding it for an urban audience or Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - the numbers speak for themselves).