Unite Tokyo 2020 by Unity Japan will be canceled

Events are being canceled one after another due to coronavirus pandemics. Unity Japan has announced that they will cancel the annual conference event Unite Tokyo 2020 in Tokyo since 2013.

Unite Tokyo is Japan's largest Unity event with many technical lectures and booth exhibitions for Japanese Unity users. This is the first time they have canceled this.
However, they are considering holding the event online and will announce more details once they are determined.
And, they will continue to support other Unity events, but these will only be online for a while, too.
They will post casual tech talks about Unity on Youtube until the coronavirus pandemic ends in Japan.
Their YouTube channel is here.

Facility for people with disabilities to become professional gamers

There are various welfare facilities for people with disabilities in Japan, but a cool facility ONEGAME will open in Ota City, Gunma Prefecture in June. It's a facility where they aim to become professional gamers in e-sports.

One-Life, a company that provides welfare services mainly in Gunma Prefecture, has originally been involved in e-Sports participation of people with disabilities. They introduce equipment for each type of people with disabilities and train by coaches. In addition, in August 2019, they held Japan's first people with disabilities e-Sports competition event using the League of Legends.
ONEGAME is a development form of these, and is a facility for continuing jobs. They not only train e-Sports players, but also event management staff and announcers to help people with disabilities become independent through e-Sports.

This is Japan's first welfare facility and a welfare project. I hope this succeeds.

Tokyo Game Show 2020 and CEDEC 2020 canceled(and CEDEC will be held online)

Of course this is due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Today, Japan's Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association(CESA) has made two big decisions. They will cancel this year's Tokyo Game Show 2020 and CEDEC 2020, the conference event for developers.

These two events are held in September each year, and autumn feature of Japanese game industries. However, CESA considers the health of visitors, exhibitors, presses, and staff, as the coronavirus infection is spreading worldwide and it is still unpredictable in Japan. So they decided to cancel.
However, they also decided to host the events online at the same time. It has already been decided that CEDEC 2020 will be held online without changing the schedule. Details such as specific contents and platforms will be announced in the near future.

It's future artists - Let's create a virtual singer with AI

Even though today's virtual artists have virtual figures, real people are in them. Even popular vocaloids are based on the voices of real-life actors. However, what if AI learns music and aims to become a singer?
EXDREAM, a company that manages music TECH schools, opened an AI Virtual Singer Lab in the online salon community operated by the crowdfunding platform CAMPFIRE.

This is a project to create and grow him/her with supporters, aiming at the music production by AI by making AI machine learn MIDI. In this project, supporters provide MIDI data, and AI learns them. The research results of what he/she composes will be shared with the supporters. In addition, the machine learning data generated by this project will be distributed, and supporters will be free to use them for their own research and studies.

Of course, he/she has shows on Youtube or Facebook like other virtual artists(VTuber). There are two monthly billing plans to participate in this project. For a monthly fee of 1000 yen, you can watch his/her show every month and read the report email magazines. With a monthly fee of 10,000 yen, you can get many benefits, but unfortunately, all support is in Japanese only.

Japanese virtual performer startup COVER has raised 700 million yen

The real entertainment industry is in recession due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the virtual entertainment industry is booming and the news of funding is continuous.

See also:
Japanese VR performance platform VARK has raised 200 million yen

Japanese virtual performer startup COVER has raised a total of 700 million yen from venture capitalists and individual investors. As a result, their cumulative amount raised to about 1 billion yen.

They are startups of virtual performers(VTuber). Under their umbrella are women's VTuber group Hololive, men's VTuber group Holostars, and the virtual music label Inonaka Music.
In particular, they have recently been focusing on overseas expansion, starting activities in China's video sharing service Bilibili in January 2019, and starting a VTuber business in China in September 2019. They also started the VTuber business in Indonesia in April 2020 and are currently holding a VTuber audition in the English-speaking world.

See also:
Japanese VTuber Productions will expand into the English-speaking world

Their most popular VTuber Tokino-Sora. She debuted in September 2017 and their business started.

Now they have 50 VTubers, and the total number of YouTube and Bilibili fans has exceeded 15 million.

With the funds raised this time, they will strengthen VTubers support, further accelerate VTuber business overseas such as English-speaking countries, and develop new services of XR such as virtual show platform.