Comics To Be Distributed On GBA Flashcarts In Japan 28
Thanks to 1UP for its article discussing plans to distribute comic strips via Game Boy Advance flash RAM cartridges in Japan. The cart will be released in August by the same company (Toshiba/AM3) as the previously mentioned Advance Movie Player system, and both will share a distribution scheme "...similar to Nintendo's own vending-machine distribution of 16-bit Super Famicom games. Consumers would buy blank cartridges separately and download content into them at kiosk terminals, placed at game stores and other locations, and then view that content on their GBAs."
Cost? (Score:1)
Re:Cost? (Score:2)
Re:Cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think comic strips are quite a different animal than the Famicom system you cite as evidence. It has always cost more to produce a video game than it is to produce a comic strip.
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider the "marvellous" revolution of e-books. Surely e-books also benefit from a reduction in printing and distribution costs, yet they cost almost as much as traditional, dead-tree books. (Aside: Maybe this is why e-books have not taken off yet?) While I grant that advertising might fund the distribution of these comics, I honestly doubt that the cost will be removed from the transaction completely. Even if advertisers are willing to pay the full cost of producing and distributing the content, if the content companies can squeeze a few extra yen out of the consumers they will do so. More profit is the aim after all.
I think comic strips are quite a different animal than the Famicom system you cite as evidence. It has always cost more to produce a video game than it is to produce a comic strip.
While that is definitely true, there is still a cost involved in producing the comic - ie, paying the writers/artists and distribution costs. Stores are not going to install download kiosks unless someone is paying for their presence. Who will pay for the network connections required to transmit the content? Who will pay to prepare the content in the first place. There are costs involved, even if they are lower than the costs involved in producing a video game. What this means is that the cost to the consumer will be much lower than a video game would cost, but the cost will most certainly still be there.
Re:Cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm...I can't profess to say much about this particular situation, but I can give you a little background on the comic situation in Japan.
I believe that the printing costs for comics in Japan are much lower than in America, as all comics are in black and white, and they don't have to publish/stock 30 page comic every week, but a 200 page comic every 2 months or so. Witness the fact that, for example, the next New Xmen comic will be 32 pages and cost $3.95, while the new Gabachitare I bought a few days ago is 230 pages and costs $4.66.
I don't have any proof that comics cost less to make, but the anecdotal evidence seems to point at that conclusion.
Re:Cost? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Cost? (Score:2)
But, as you can see, either way, we're talking much cheaper than the U.S. I don't know what the
Money fairies (Score:2)
As opposed to the possibility that it could be driven by ads being a chickensaurus?
I think they should make the cartridges really, really small, so we can use micropayments.
Re:Money fairies (Score:2)
Indeed, people who are incapable of walking without falling are not funny. They are sad.
The point of my post was the micropayments bit. Hence the subject "money fairies." A Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com] reference usually works on /.
Relying on advertising to fund a new medium doesn't work very well anymore. There are
Re:Cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
In order to make enough money to be of interest to a Japanese company, they'd need to sell the content.
This is nothing new - just another proprietary media. Except for the focus on comics - which makes sense really, considering actual video would fill a flash cart quickly and all the text you could want is available through cell phones, which all Japanese people with GBAs would own anyway.
Don't worry, the chance of this format making it to the west, where comics are for the young and the social outcasts, are slim.
I like the idea, the GBA is underutilized (Score:4, Informative)
Note: It was the famicom(NES) that had disk games in vending machines, not Super Famicom(SNES) the only SFC disk "systems" were unlicensed add-ons that allowed game copying, backups and pirating
Re:I like the idea, the GBA is underutilized (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I like the idea, the GBA is underutilized (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the console market. Nintendo is the only company with a non-standard disc format - and as it happens, the only one whose games can't be easily copied. In Any country.
Doesn't quit hold true for the GBA (Score:2)
Second is that the rom images are tiny smaller then an mp3 song often wich makes it trivial to distro them.
Third is the fact that there exist a couple of flashcards for the gba that you can use to copy images too. This even results in you having ONE catridge with a dozen games and save games you can edit on the pc.
But most important is that GBA games are insanely pri
Re:I like the idea, the GBA is underutilized (Score:2, Interesting)
The service was called Nintendo Power [nintendo.co.jp] and it ended back in 2002. AFAIK, there were some SFC games that were only available thru this service. Actually, the famicon disk rewrite service just ended a few years ago too.
akamichi
Penny-Arcade (Score:3, Funny)
It would be so awesome to read these especially:
1 [penny-arcade.com]
2 [penny-arcade.com]
3 [penny-arcade.com]
4 [penny-arcade.com]
5 [penny-arcade.com]
Flashcarts? (Score:2)
Am I missing something? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now the japanese also got strips like that, except theirs tend to four panels per strip and are vertical. These I could imagine being on a GBA screen. One panel at a time. Down and up to flip panels, left and right to flip strips.
Even then it would be hell to read the more wordy ones. There is a huge difference between watching an animation WITHOUT subs (japanese don't need their anime subbed :P ) and reading handdrawn text.
The more regular manga would be even harder as like in comics or strips there are no rules about the size of a panel. You could of course pan a large page on the gba screen but that sounds like a hazzle.
Pity there are no screenshots.
All this talk about movies, music, wireless play and now manga being squeezed on the GBA is making me think that there really would be a market for a far more powerfull device with a bigger screen that could do all this. At least in japan.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:1)
Awesome Technology! (Score:1)
Re:Awesome Technology! (Score:1)
Is this big idea stolen from Big? (Score:1)
Seriously, what will 20th century fox have to say about this?