Japan

SoftBank Continues To See India As A Lucrative B2C Business Opportunity – Aims Investment of Up To $10 Billion:

Dec 4, 2016 By

SoftBank, the Japanese business investor, shows no signs of relent when it comes to investing in India, despite a major mark down in business. The investment giant had proceeded to invest in the Indian B2C business on a warfoot basis, its major investments being E-Commerce portal Snapdeal, grocery delivery application Grofers and the mega cab company, Ola. However, all three face stiff competition from their major competitors and have not been able to match the expectations in revenue. While Snapdeal has to compete with India’s largest E-Commerce giant, Flipkart, the Grofers mobile application is suffering at the hands of ‘Big Basket’, who attracts more users with both a mobile and a web interface and Ola is struggling to fight international cab hailing app Uber. Other investments include OYO, which is a hotel booking platform and ‘Housing’, a service that hosts real estate classifieds. Both these businesses have so far, not reported any major losses or write offs.

Masayoshi Son CEO of SoftBank Meets Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

The battle has caused the investor to write off almost $550 million from these services earlier in November this year, particularly from Snapdeal and Ola, further causing their market value to plummet. To add to this, SoftBank lost a big support from the man who introduced it to the Indian market, Nikesh Arora, who jumped ship, moving into another big opportunity. Moreover, the company even mentioned making a loss of almost $557 million up to September 2016 alone, which is a stark difference to the $1.08 billion profit that it had reported last year.

Nikesh Arora of SoftBank with Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Nikkesh recently left SoftBank.

All this has not caused CEO of SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, to flinch even for a moment. He believes that his plans of a $10 billion investment is bound to prove its worth, eventually and might even ‘surpass it’ as mentioned by Son at an event in Delhi. Son had previously met the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narendra Modi to discuss his plans and had promised to make investments in India. Had the Japanese Yen not received an appreciation, the value of the investments in India would not have gone down for SoftBank.

New records set for Universal Studios Japan, sets sight at crossing 14 million visitors

Mar 8, 2016 By

On Monday, a new record attendance was set by Universal Studios Japan (USJ) with approximately 12.7 million visitors, and still 24 days to go until this fiscal year ends on March 31.

The attendance was boosted to a record 12.7 visitors last year and it all happened with more than a little help of the $444 million addition of Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which was opened in July of 2014. All the visitors who took the attendance to a new record were greeted by 21 different characters, which also included Minions from the Despicable Me movie franchise, Snoopy and also Japan’s Hello Kitty.

It is also reported that the current year has also indeed seen a record number of visitors from overseas. It all happened in the middle of a tourist boom in Japan which saw 20 million visitors coming to the country in 2015. These 20 million tourists included one million from the US and nearly 5 million from China.

Johta Takahashi, the co spokesperson at Universal Studios Japan told the Hollywood reporter that around 10 percent of their guests now come from abroad which include mostly from Asia and also stated that this was the first year in which the foreign visitors have crossed the million mark.

Universal Studios Japan was acquired by Comcast’s NBC Universal as a part of a deal of $1.5 Billion which was announced in September. Since opening in 2001, the theme park has been operating under license.

That being said, a series of events for the 15^th anniversary of the theme park are due to kick off on the 18^th of March and the representatives are thinking that it would take the attendance at Universal Studios Japan up to around 14 million for the year. The USJ follows the Japanese corporate financial year which starts from April to March.

Sankei newspaper of Japan wrote an article on Saturday about the newest addition coming to the theme park, Nintendo land, which is already revealed by both the companies. The said Nintendo attraction is set to open at USJ in 2020. The details about the project were also mentioned in the article by the Japanese newspaper. The cost was also reevaled to be around $350 million (40 billion Yen).

Takahashi said that while all the plans for the new attraction were moving forward, the details in the newspapers were incorrect.

Seems like the Universal Studios Japan are on the rise and could soon become one of the best theme parks of the world.

2020 Summer Olympics: 8 new games nominated for the upcoming summer Olympics!

Jun 27, 2015 By

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics seem quite far away, but 5 years is no time in today’s rapid paced world where changes are a part and parcel of our life.

With change happening in so many domains and in such rapid succession, change is truly the only constant now and the world has accepted that for a fact.

Change is evident in every aspect of our lifestyle right from our the world of technology to our modern day lifestyle and living.

From the food we eat to the drinks we drink, from the content that we watch to the sports that we play – change has been evident, and change has been largely visible and noticeable.

Change has also been witnessed in the sports, as mentioned above, and the age old practice that is benevolently known as the Olympics has now become a major attraction!

A tradition that began in the early Greek eras to provide the world a champion of champions in various disciplines, has today grown into a global sports spectacle, with thousands of people lining up to witness this global event with athletes from around the world pouring in to participate for the apex reward.

With big names in sports all going head to head against each other for the gold, the spectacle is certainly worth a watch as it is the grandest stage of them all.

There are various local and national sporting events and each of them hold their own ground, but when it comes to Olympics it is certainly something special.

The 2020 Olympics are going to be special, more special than ever before, as after quite a while, eight new names have been added on to the list of sports in the Olympics. However, they are still ‘possibles’ and are not sure to make it, but their mention has been making quite some news.

The sports that are mentioned are:
• baseball/softball,
• bowling,
• karate,
• roller sports,
• sport climbing,
• squash,
• surfing,
• wushu.

However, eighteen names have seen an missed out this time around:
• air sports,
• american football,
• bowls,
• bridge,
• chess,
• dancesport,
• floorball,
• flying disc,
• korfball,
• netball,
• orienteering,
• polo,
• racquetball,
• snooker,
• sumo,
• tug of war,
• underwater sports,
• water skiing.

It is quite a shocker that Sumo and Snooker are not included as they were heavy favourites for selection. According to a report by BBC, All eight federations will now progress to a second stage of the application process, which will include the submission of further details by 22 July before briefings to organisers due to take place in Tokyo on 7 and 8 August.

As part of reforms initiated by International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach last year, Games hosts have the chance to bring in one or more sports popular in their country to boost ratings and attract greater sponsorship.

Nintendo To Make Games Like Mario For Smartphones With DeNa’s Collaboration

Mar 19, 2015 By

Nintendo Entertainment system, the creator of games like Mario, Zelda and its Game Boy and 3DS has finally decided to give up its aversion to smartphone gaming and actually embraced the idea.

It seems like the company finally realized that the smartphone market is just too large and ever booming to keep ignoring.

And has collaborated with Japanese smartphone maker DeNa to create some of its titles like Mario, especially for the smartphones.

This collaboration was announced at a press conference called at a very short notice in Tokyo.

What could have driven Nintendo into changing its stance all of a sudden?

Needless it say, it is competition that drives a company to take the most unexpected business decisions and in this case it has been the competition faced from the next gen consoles like Xbox One and the Sony PS4.

Surprising as this declaration was, the smartphone and the gaming console industries would both be mutually benefited by this truce, which holds a value of $182 million, with 10% of the stakes in Nintendo’s bag and 1% with DeNa.

Sometime around this fall, there could be a membership service in place that would allow users to have access to the smartphone versions of their favorite franchises like Mario, Pokemon and Zelda on their smartphones, PC and tablets.

Porting games would not be an option for Nintendo Wii U or 3Ds systems.

DeNa, which is a Japanese smartphone gaming company, makes most of its revenue by selling its games online.

The company also has been facing some bad times and has jumped at this opportunity. DeNA spokesman Tomoyuki Akiyama has expressed that the company would be highly profited by this venture and they plan to give their best into the future projects.

A similar train of thoughts came from the president of Nintendo Entertainment system, Satoru Iwata, who mentioned in the press conference held on Tuesday, that despite their collaboration with DeNa, the gaming console sector would not be left behind.

The company would continue their console lineup and would use their link with DeNa as a means to reach maximum number of users across the world as possible, reaping fruit for both parties.

Having said all that, Iwata mentioned that a new Nintendo console called NX would soon be available in the markets.

GTA V for XBOX One a major flop in Japan – fails to make it to top 50 list

Dec 24, 2014 By

GTA V has been a series that has witnessed a global success.

With massive, record breaking sales in every part of the planet, the game has risen to become the highest grossing and the fastest selling game of all times.

There have been many challenges that the game has faced.

There have been protests and there have been lawsuits, and then there has been general rejection from a small group of people too.

However none of these have stopped the game from progressing and becoming what it today is.

Statistically there are very high chances that if you own a PS3, PS4, XBOX One or XBOX 360, you might also own a GTA V.

That is the most likely game you are to own if you own only one game – this is not what I say, this is what the number games suggest.

However, this may or may not be true. Shocking example of this is that in Japan, the game has failed to make it to even the top 50 when it comes to the video games in Japan.

This has been a shocking news and crisis management has already begun in the XBOX japan team.

What is even more shocking here is that his all happens despite the fact that the GTA series in itself is very popular in Japan as It debuted very strongly on PS3 with 360,115 copies sold in its first week, and even managed to get a dignified ninth place in the Media Create ranking with the Xbox 360 version, selling 26,612 units despite the fact that Microsoft’s older console isn’t very popular locally.

Last week the game had a decent debut on PS4 too, with 81,659 copies sold. However the XBOX One version failed to make it to even the top 50 list.

On Wednesday, a list of the Top 20 games was released, and the GTA V was nowhere to be seen, a bigger shock came in when it was absent even from the top 50 games list. No XBOX One game was a part of that list.

However, the country has been seeing slow sales of the console in itself as the sales range between 500-1000 units usually and the past week saw some 724 consoles being sold in the country.

However, this is going to improve soon with XBOX now featuring a lot on the international markets as their US and UK markets now seem under control.

Keep following us at TheREM for more updates on the same.

Tekken 7 Two New Characters revealed for Xbox 360, PS3

Oct 6, 2014 By

YouTube user Abdul Ghaffar Allaf has created sensations in the world of gaming when he uploaded his latest video on his channel.

The Youtube channel shows us Claudio, the latest member to make his way in the Tekken 7 game.

And following that video, another video has surfaced on the internet from various sources which show Katarina, another newcomer in the game.

Both these characters have been unannounced. All this information has come out as the game has started its location testing in Japan. The game is ninth in the tekken series of games and is being developed by Bandai Namco Games.

Rage Arts and Power Crush have been the latest additions to this age old franchise, which have been a point of generation of interest for the game, as a lot of gamers will find this feature unique and attractive.

The Rage Arts basically are a set of fighter specific commands which can allow a fighter to enter into a state of rage, where the attack damage gets increased and they can perform various special moves which they ordinarily cannot.

The power crush moves are special moves which cannot be interrupted by attacks like other moves, however they do have an opening for damage to you but are much stronger moves, they can be used unlimited times, but you might be open to receive more damage when performing these moves than when performing normal moves, it is a gamble one takes. It is advisable to use them early in the game.

A lot of fighter customization options are also said to be out. However details are still missing in this regard. The games graphics are said to be 60% finished, character lighting, skin shades and some other features are missing.

Tekken 7 will be an arcade only release next year. Console details have not been revealed as of now.