Samsung and Japanese professional baseball team offer VR contents to fans

Samsung Japan and Japanese professional baseball team Yokohama DeNA BayStars(Well, the owner is mobile game company DeNA) provide VR contents to fans to a start in this season. They install Gear VR booths in the stadium and show various 360-degree video to fans. We can see them in this special page "360 BayStars".

They add new 360-degree videos every month during the season. They showed these from this month, and passed 35,000 views in only one week.

Furthermore, in the official goods shop of the BayStars' home stadium in Yokohama, collaboration model of Gear VR of BayStars and Galaxy is sold.

Pokemon Company and Niantic started field test of Pokémon GO in Japan

Pokemon Company and Niantic started field test of Pokémon GO for Android users in Japan.

Pokémon GO is geolocation mobile game using the GPS function of the smartphones. Players become the pokemon trainer, catch pokemon in the reality world, bring them up and can confront other players. It's just the geolocation game that combined the Pokemon series with Niantic's Ingress.

They adopt them for development with feedback from testers, and will increase the number of people of testers progressively. However, unfortunately the test is carried out only in Japan.

mixi started promotion of the popular mobile game Monster Strike for North America

mixi started promotion activity of their popular mobile game Monster Strike in earnest in the North America. In the beginning.They show CM. Director is Wayne McClammy, and Andy Samberg appears in it as a coach of monsters.



mixi cooperated with Facebook for promotion in the North America from February. They show CM in accord with each for 8 targets which they segmented, and perform the offline-marketing from now on.

NAMCO opens VR amusement facilities "VR ZONE Project i Can" in Tokyo on April 15

NAMCO opens VR amusement facilities "VR ZONE Project i Can" in the DiverCity Tokyo 3F on April 15. But it's limitation for half a year and Only people who made a reservation online can enter it. Unfortunately under 13 years old cannot enter it.

"VR ZONE Project i Can" is VR arcade for adults, we can enjoy various contents using VR, and BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment develops the contents. The contents that they plan now are six kinds. Walking over the board which stuck out on the high-rise building, cliff precipice ski, car racing, horror escape the room, driving of the train, and driving of the huge robot. Play times are 6min ~ 14min and play fees are 700yen ~ 1000yen. However, we cannot pay them in real coins. We must realize e-money of BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment "Bana Coin" of  before entering there.

They start entrance registration in web site on April 8 12:00. Demonstrations of VR contents are popular always anywhere in Japan. However, the people must wait for a long time because VR are too popular. They want to solve it in permanent amusement facilities and registration. But unfortunately the text of the web site is only Japanese. Foreign tourists who want to experience these, please use the translation sites!

 

Level-5 and NHN PlayArt released English ver. of Yo-Kai Watch's mobile game Yo-Kai Watch Puni Puni

Level-5 and NHN PlayArt released "Yo-kai Watch Wibble Wobble", the English version of Yo-Kai Watch's mobile game Yo-Kai Watch Puni Puni last week in US, Canada and Australia. The downloading is free(iOS/Android).

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Yo-Kai Watch's mobile game Yo-Kai Watch Puni Puni released soon in North America

Yo-Kai Watch of the 3DS game is an RPG, but this is a puzzle game. At first, players make friends with Yo-Kai butler Whisper, and battle against Yo-Kais who are in the downtown with puzzle according to his guide. When players win to Yo-Kais, they can make friends with them. The basic game system is the same as Japanese ver. Yo-Kai Watch Puni Puni. However, as a matter of course, all texts, names of Yo-kai, names of their skill are modified by English. For example, "Puni"(Puzzle bubble) in Jp ver. is "Wib-Wob". In addition, all voice actors of characters are changed in English ver., too. Almost all voices are recorded only for this newly. They gave enough localization for a mobile game.

Nintendo's first mobile apps Miitomo passed 1M downloading from release in only 3 days in Japan

Nintendo released their first mobile application Miitomo this month in Japan. Naturally it became the big topic and passed 1 million downloading from release in only three days. They release this at the end of this month in a global market if on schedule, but do not announce the concrete date.

First of all this is not game application. Players can make own avatar Mii, coordinate it with various fashion items and make funny images. Mii does various questions to players, when players reply them, informations are accumulated. This is avatar Social Networking Service rather than game application, and may be a rival of LINE PLAY(LINE's mobile virtual world).

 At first players choose the area where oneself lives in.

 Next, input the date of birth.

 Time to make Mii! Players can choose various parts and make Mii, but this has a function to generate Mii automatically from selfie. This is very simple.

Own Mii was completed at last.

This has original virtual currency Miitomo coins. Players can get it by achieving missions(ex, reply questions of Mii) in application.

The fashion items which Mii wears first are too simple. At first let's purchase new fashion items.

The rare fashion items are available by the mini-game such as the pinball. However, this is very difficult.

Furthermore, players put expressions, poses, background images of Mii together, make funny images and can share them in other sites such as Facebook. It is just like the camera application.

Sometimes friend's Mii come to own room, but because this is the social networking service that is async, the real-time chat is impossible. The Miis only share the information that they can show.

This is very easy avatar service. It may be comfortable for the people who were tired from messaging application, Facebook and Twitter.

Compact earphone which prevents oversleeping

It is everyday scenes in Japan that people doze in commuter trains, and you might have overslept in a train if you were the worker who worked in a busy city in Japan. Stationery company King Jim released a simple and convenient alarm earphone.

 This earphone has vibrating motors and wakes up users by stimulating the ear of users directly. Users can use "Alarm mode" that set the time when they must to get up and "Timer mode" that set the time in minutes. When you get up in the morning, Alarm mode is convenient and When you get on a train, Timer mode is required. For example, when you must get on a train to the destination for 30 minutes, if you set it in Timer mode for 30 minutes, you do not pass the destination even if you doze off by any chance. Users can choose vibration among three phases, and of course this earphone functions as a common earphone also with smartphones, tablets and audio players. One AAA alkaline battery is necessary for this and users can use this for about six months. The price is 6480 yen(tax included).

via http://www.kingjim.co.jp/sp/nmr10/

Gungho confront Pokemon GO by new geolocation apps "Puzz-Dra Radar"

Puzzle & Dragons is a Gungho's popular mobile game. It passed 40 million downloading in Japan in this month. However, they add a newer element to this. They released geolocation application "Puzz-Dra Radar(パズドラレーダー)" in conjunction with Puzzle & Dragons. The downloading is free(iOS/Android), but can use it now only in Japan.

This is geolocation treasure hunt application using the GPS of smartphones. Players can collect various virtual items in this application using positional information in the movement of the reality world, and can change them for challenge rights of special dungeon and special monsters in Puzzle & Dragons. This is similar to general geolocation mobile games. In Japan, geolocation mobile games was popular from the futurephones era. In addition, Nintendo and Niantic develop geolocation mobile game of of the Pokemon series "Pokémon GO". Of course Gungho will mind this.

mixi also entered VR business

A lot of Japanese mobile game companies pay attention to VR. mixi is no exception. They make money in popular mobile game Monster Strike, but, in addition, released new 360-degree panoramic video service Kimidake360 °(きみだけ360 °: Only for you 360 °).

Kimidake360 ° is mobile VR contents version of "Kimidake LIVE" providing original video of artists. Users can see 360-degree panoramic video of artists by using simple VR goggles supporting smartphones(Like the Google Cardboard). In the beginning, they showed contents of Boys band Break through. These are shown in Japanese 360-degree panoramic video platform Hacosco Store.

Air cleaner which can exterminate mosquitoes

Air cleaner absorbs dirty air and exhaust clean air. SHARP paid attention to this function and developed Air cleaner which can capture mosquitoes without using chemists. The mosquitoes are drawn to ultraviolet rays, like black, and want to be covered in the dark and the shade. They adopted these in a design of Air cleaner. The body of this is black, has UV lights emitting ultraviolet rays and plural small windows. When mosquitoes near it, it absorbs them with dirty air and capture them with an adhesion sheet. Because chemists is unnecessary as for this, families having infants, elderly, or pets can use this in peace.
Originally SHARP released this in the ASEAN countries from September, 2015, but they sell it in Japan from April 23. It is important that they release this before summer begins. Because the spread of epidemics by mosquitoes is a social problem in Japan also.

This button type speaker gives voices to stuffed toys

If stuffed toys can talk... Anyone would dream in childhood. Toy speaker "Pechat" realizes it. Parents attach this to children's favorite stuffed toys, pretend to be the stuffed toys, and can talk to children. Pechat is the yellow button-shaped chat speaker which HAKUHODO's new product development project monom developed, has lithium ion rechargable battery, and links smartphones in Bluetooth.

When users talk to Pechat's smartphone apps, it converts their voice into the cute voice of stuffed toys automatically and replay it from Pechat. In addition, this has function to convert texts into voices, templates of lines, automatic responses function, and alarm function. Furthermore, it has a function that detects the crying of children and informs it to the parents' smartphone, so parents can use this as a monitoring tool. Unfortunately it is undecided on the sale date of this. However, HAKUHODO showed this in a trade show of SxSW 2016.

Japan's national public channel NHK showed 360-degree contents of The great Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami

March 11 is a memorial day of The great Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Five years passed, but the rehabilitation is behind the original plan, and many people still suffer. We must not let memory of  this disaster weather.
Today, Japan's national public broadcasting organization NHK showed interesting data. They showed images and videos that took scenery of the disaster-stricken area with a 360-degree camera.

http://www.nhk.or.jp/d-navi/vr/shinsaivr/

The most of these ruins are in the places that became restricted residence area by a nuclear plant accident. As for them, time stops before five years.

For example, there were ever 125 kids in this kindergarten. Fortunately, all of them were saved because they evacuated immediately, but they could not go to this kindergarten again.

It is a large office in a mess a little. Town's emergency management headquarters was established here only  March 11, 2011. However, all residents of the town evacuated on next day.

Unfortunately this site has only Japanese. However, it is easy to see videos and images if you are used to VR contents.