Cult blogger Brian @Kotaku wrote an interesting post about the circulation numbers for domestic video games magazines released byThe Japanese Magazine Publishers Association.

Kind of funny how the "Association" forgot GameLabo that with its 200.000 copies is the second best selling videogame magazine in Japan (and it even runs my very own monthly column ^_^)! Another interesting missing title is Tech Gian (the best selling magazine about hentai videogames) published by Enterbrain with a circulation of over 100.000 copies...

Title: Weekly Famitsu
Publisher: Enterbrain
Circulation: 500,000 <-- Really?! ROTFL (real sales are less than half but the magazine is still influential as it's read, not bought, in thousands of Convenience stores around the Country)

Dengeki Nintendo DS
ASCII Media Works
160,000

Famitsu PSP+PS3
Enterbrain
150,000

...

Today is the day: Kotaku started the final attack the DEATH STAR!  Via @Brian_Ashcraft
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My old friends Okubo San (author of mecha design for cult games like Tekki for xbox and Infinite Sapce best selling DS game. REcently he published the book Industrial Divinities) and Kentao "Ani" Fujimoto from Nendo Graphixx (the designer that over 10 years ago started the pixel/famicom design boom) are goin to partecipate to natsu comi and will sell a doujinshi called The eightbit fighters Chonicles Vol1. This mini book will feature Okubo 3D reproductions of the best spacecrafts from 8bit shooting games.
 

Brian @ Kotaku posted about the Cave's revolutionary new revenue sharing marketing for upcoming Arcade PCBs. Basically CAVE will provide free games to game centers willing to share the revenues coming from the games. It's a really interesting approach and I'm really curious how JAMMA association fits in since this Japanese association, with its high license costs (yes you need to pay em to distribute ana arcade game in Japan), is partly responsible for the decline of the arcade market in Japan... I suppose that the license cost is based on a % of the PCB price so CAVE probably is trying to bypass the JAMMA license fees...  The first revenue sharing game wil be DEATHSMILES 2.  I'm also curios if this announcement is in some way connected by the suddenly choise of the cult game center in Shinjuku MIKADO to remove EVERY Cave game... hmm... but probably this is just a shooting gamer paranoia...

Next year there will be another (and probably more revolutionary) announcement that will influence a lot, and possibily revive, the Japanese arcade business but since I'm under NDA I can't reveal anything...
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WOW! Today Brian "Kotaku"  Asciukurafuto San appeared in Zoom In!! Super, one of my favourite shows on Japanese TV! He spoke about about Japanese arcades seen by foreigners perspective and of course about his great new book: Arcade Mania.
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Brian at Kotaku spotted this new AV DVD with five clones of Shokotan: the most popular otaku idol in Japan. I like Kotaku  and their Maximum Risky posts since is probably the only super blog that considers Japanese porno entertainment like videogames...

Japan will never stop to surprise me: last week, in Japanese stores, PS3 sold less than Xbox360!
I feel that more than a WII/PS3/360 console war in Japan there is a portable console vs home console war with the latter loosing every week: after the restyle the PSP started to be a good seller instead the new PS3 seems following the path of the first models.
Basically, way before the release last year, the meme "PLAYSTATION 3 is TOTALLY UNCOOL" spread among japanese otaku subconscious  and I feel Sony needs more than a new/cheaper model to overcome this negative meme... the party is not over (the new PS3 model will sure sell during first weeks), but the cake...  (Media Create's Official Japanese hardware and software sales here or on the right column of this blog)

In Japan, among porno producers,  there is a  boom of videos inspired by succesfull anime and manga. Today Japanese mega porno factory Soft On Demand has annunced that on 22th november the new porno parody of Omamori Hirami manga (preview here) will be released. This DVD will be starred by AV idol "Yume Kimino" (ゆめ  君野 = ゆめ = "Dream"  きみの  = "Your") famous for the Suzumiya Harui porno parody..


Sample video here (NTSFW)

Aggiornamento
(news originale: 20 luglio)

Kotaku ha appena postato la nuova copertina di Wired di agosto con una ricetta/guida per creare la torta Wii di Martha Stewart!
L'articolo, o meglio l'intervista a Martha, è stata realizzata dal nostro amico Mark Frauenfelder che è uno dei co-fondatori* della rivista Boing Boing che da qualche anno da pubblicazione cartacea è diventata un blog di enorme successo.
Sul sito di Wired è possibile leggere l'articolo in inglese.

* L'altro editore di Boing Boing magazine era Carla Sinclair che oggi è l'editor della leggendaria rivista di "techno bricolage" MAKE  Magazine.