Welcome to this week's Movie/Music news roundup, containing new Japanese and Hong Kong Video and Music releases from this week listed at Play-Asia.com. Around 860 new items are covered in this week, including new J-Pop, Anime as well as Japanese, Hong Kong and Western movie releases and much more.

The feature length movie Evangelion 1.0 You Are (not) Alone [Limited Pressing] from the hit franchise has arrived this week. The anime series was tremendously popular when it came out during the late 1990s and its related items, including games and toys, have been going strong ever since.

The set of feature length movies is a retelling of the anime series, and this first film starts with the fourteen year old Shinji Ikari moving to Tokyo to join his father, only to be commanded to pilot the bio-weapon Evangelion. Through upgraded graphics and sounds, rewatch the exhilarating fights between the EVA and the mysterious angels, as well as Ikari Shinji's (mis)adventures of growing up.

Hit Jpop group Arashi released their newest original album Dream A Live. The limited edition of this album was presold prior its release date, this is how popular this boy band is! This album has something for everyone, it contains catchy pop songs, rock music, ballads and two of their latest singles "Happiness" and "Step and Go".

Final Fantasy XI: Wings of the Goddess Original Soundtrack contains a collection of music from the ever growing multi-platform online RPG. Listen to it and let it draw out the fantasy elements of your daily life.

Here's a summary of all new releases that were published between Saturday, April 19th and Friday, April 25th. If some specific item that you are looking for is missing, please don't hesitate to contact our customer service with your request.


J-Pop Music releases (159)
ENKA Music releases (57)
Anime Soundtracks & Drama CDs (70)
Video Game Soundtracks (11)
Hong Kong Version Music releases (2)
Blu-ray Disc Movies (14)
HD DVD Movies (3)
Anime & Animation (148)
Hong Kong Version Movie releases (22)
Japanese Movies (76)
Non-Japanese Movies / Japanese Version (228)
J-Pop DVD releases (15)
Misc Japanese Movie releases (2)
Idol DVD (55)
UMD™ Video & Music (1)

http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-...9-en-84-n.html ...

Video game sales prognosticators predict that Grand Theft Auto IV will sell some 9 to 12 million copies this year, lining the pockets of Take-Two execs and Rockstar Games employees. It may also help the PlayStation 3, at least more so than the Xbox 360, says Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter. It's not just him, either, as BMO Capital Markets' Edward Williams thinks GTA's PlayStation heritage may inspire some to drop the cash on a new PS3.

Sony probably doesn't have much to worry about in Europe, where they'll be shipping a GTA IV hardware bundle. Time will tell whether the GTA fanbase deems the prospect of downloadable content and Xbox Live support more important than Sony's software exclusives like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Gran Turismo 5 as motivating factors in making their console choices. Who else can't wait for April's NPD sales data?! Should be very good times.

http://kotaku.com/383794/grand-theft...t-say-analysts ...

Let down! Wii Fit isn't one hundred percent exactly as Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto pictured it. Instead of just weighing people, Miyamoto wanted it to weigh pets. According to Newsweek:

...Nintendo design boss Shigeru Miyamoto had wanted to include a mode that would allow players to weigh their pets. He wasn't able to include it in the Japanese version, but in the North American version, available May 19th, players will receive a message informing them that if they weigh themselves while holding their pets, then weigh themselves again separately and subtract the two, the difference will tell them how much their pet weighs.

No word whether Miyamoto also hoped to have balance board mini-games for pets.

http://kotaku.com/383891/miyamoto-wa...weigh-pets-too ...

Hoping for cheaper DSs and Wiis? Hope some more, and then after that, hope some more. Ain't gonna happen says Nintendo. While Nintendo's competitors have slashed prices, Nintendo is being conservative. Nintendo doesn't need to cut no stinking prices! Says company president Satoru Iwata:

Our earnings projection for the year is not based on hardware price cuts, and I don't think we are going to need them.

Yesterday, Nintendo said its operating profit more than doubled last year. And yet, the company isn't passing that along to future consumers. Why? Nintendo is a business. Nintendo is not your buddy, Mr. Consumer. (That is, unless you own Nintendo stock, then you're BFF.

http://kotaku.com/383941/not-plannin...cuts-this-year ...

Hoping for cheaper DSs and Wiis? Hope some more, and then after that, hope some more. Ain't gonna happen says Nintendo. While Nintendo's competitors have slashed prices, Nintendo is being conservative. Nintendo doesn't need to cut no stinking prices! Says company president Satoru Iwata:

Our earnings projection for the year is not based on hardware price cuts, and I don't think we are going to need them.

Yesterday, Nintendo said its operating profit more than doubled last year. And yet, the company isn't passing that along to future consumers. Why? Nintendo is a business. Nintendo is not your buddy, Mr. Consumer. (That is, unless you own Nintendo stock, then you're BFF.

http://kotaku.com/383941/not-plannin...cuts-this-year ...

via kotaku

Nintendo might not be planning any DS price cuts over the next year, but Amazon is running them all day! Today's Gold Box deals on Amazon are all Nintendo DS games at low, low prices. The Deal of the Day is Advance Wars: Days of Ruin for $16.99, though I don't see that one lasting too much longer. Also not lasting much longer is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare DS, which has two hours left at $18.99. After that? A mystery! The hints for the next three games are as follows:

1. Dazzle your unsuspecting friends with your magical prowess.
2. Protect the Earth, destroy the invaders.
3. Your destiny awaits. Experience the power.
To demonstrate my complete lack of guessing skills, I will go ahead and say the first one is Magical Starsign, the second one is something about a duck, and the third one is a slotted soup spoon. Told you I suck at guessing.

Buy at Amazon ...

In my last column I suggested that, if Microsoft is to make a Wii-like controller, it should still continue to focus on the "traditional" types of games that have so far made the 360 a success, because Nintendo had already basically wrapped up the "casual" crowd. I also mentioned that the only Wii games that are apparently selling are Nintendo games and some casual games. And with that in mind, the New York Times published an article on Monday detailing that, while the Wii hardware is selling well, even seemingly popular Wii software still has some trouble continuing to sell to the Wii audience.

A somewhat surprising tidbit from the article is that, while Nintendo broke records selling more than 1.4 million copies in its first week with Super Smash Bros., its sales dropped a precipitous 90% after just 4 weeks. At that point, the sales of the game were apparently bad enough that retailers began to bundle the game with the Wii system in order to sell through their inventory. What this data suggests is that, while Nintendo may be expanding the audience that it can sell the Wii to with casual games like Wii Sports, it's failing to expand that same audience into other franchises that may represent more traditional genres. The Wii isn't just selling Nintendo-developed games and some casual games to a big audience; the audience seems almost strictly divided into casual, low-attach-rate gamers, happy with Wii Sports and picking up the occasional Wii Play and whatnot, and Nintendo loyalists who have probably played Nintendo games since the NES days. The Nintendo loyalists snapped up Super Smash Bros. instantly, and once all of those gamers had it, sales dried up soon after, seemingly failing to really expand through word of mouth into the casual crowd.

At the same time, well-reviewed 3rd-party games, like Zack & Wiki and No More Heroes, typically perform poorly on the system. This makes perfect sense considering the schema of Wii owners that we're assuming, as these games don't fit into either the casual gamer or Nintendo loyalist profile. The exception to these rules are well-established franchises, like Resident Evil or Guitar Hero, as even Nintendo loyalists (and some casual gamers) know about these and probably have played them on other systems, whether theirs or a friend's.

Is this starting to sound familiar to anyone else?

Here's a hint:

Best-selling Gamecube Software (Source: Wikipedia)

1. Super Smash Bros. Melee (7.09 million)
2. Super Mario Sunshine (5.5 million)
3. Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (4.67 million)
4. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (3.07 million)
5. Luigi's Mansion (2.53 million)
6. Animal Crossing (2.32 million)
7. Mario Party 4 (2 million)
8. Metroid Prime (2 million)
9. Mario Party 7 (1.86 million)
10. Pokemon Colosseum (1.86 million approximately)

Best-selling Wii Software (Source: Wikipedia)

1. Wii Sports (17.85 million)
2. Wii Play (9.23 million)
3. Super Mario Galaxy (5.19 million)
4. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (4.463 million)
5. Mario Party 8 (4.35 million)
6. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (4.3 million)
7. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (3.4 million)
8. Super Paper Mario (2.16 million)
9. Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree (2 million)
10. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (2 million)

For as much as Nintendo was touting its "Blue Ocean" strategy for the Wii, it sure doesn't look like much has changed. Of the Gamecube top sellers, all ten were published by Nintendo. Of the top-selling Wii-games, eight are Nintendo published, one is both arguably a Nintendo game and a "franchise" game (Mario & Sonic, since it includes the two company mascots), and the other is a well-established franchise (Guitar Hero III). Granted, some of the Nintendo games are focused on this new "casual" crowd as well, but what this suggests is simply an augmentation of its Gamecube strategy and not necessarily a completely new direction as "Blue Ocean" would suggest.

"For as much as Nintendo was touting its "Blue Ocean" strategy for the Wii, it sure doesn't look like much has changed."
This isn't necessarily such a bad thing for Nintendo. After all, even through all the doom and gloom of the Gamecube, the company was still profitable. Like the Wii, the Gamecube always sold at a profit (or very close to it). With arguably the best development teams in the industry, Nintendo has cultivated an extremely loyal fanbase who anxiously await every one of their new releases. Since these games are Nintendo published as well, they reap the full reward of their sales as well. And, of course, the Wii hardware is selling at a much better overall rate than the Gamecube, meaning that Nintendo's installed base is bigger and allows for higher software sales. But, like the Gamecube, there are some troubling aspects of the strategy. Namely, it seems to alienate 3rd-party developers, and it makes the company dependent almost entirely on self-developed "hits" a few times a year.

What Nintendo must have ...

In the outside world, we all know the iPod can take a one-man dance party from 0-60 in under 3 songs. But ever wonder what it's like on the inside? The Porta Party adopts its shape from the similarly named Porta Potty, but has the skin of an iPod. Insidethe Porta Party is an iPod dock and disco ball that will also take the one man party from 0-60 in under 3 songs — if you provide the tunes. And when you're finished inhabiting the iPod, it's kind enough NOT to spit you out on the New Jersey Turnpike.

http://gizmodo.com/383868/porta-part...-no-stinkiness ...

Conspiracy theorists and Mac rumor-mongerers, start your engines. According to an internal O2 memo we've received, stock of both the 8GB iPod touch and iPhone have run their courses, and have been EOL'd (at least in the UK). The brief letter sent out yesterday evening states that, "Due to the highly successful sales of the Apple 8GB I-Phone [sic], supply chain have today run out of stock & will not be replenishing stock of this product as it has now gone to end of life." Whether this is due to the recent price cuts, the rumored upcoming 2nd generation iPhone, or just a sign that Apple is moving towards higher capacity devices is anyone's guess. All we know is that soon the 8GB iPhone -- at least in the UK -- will become as rare and precious as the Pygmy Three-toed Sloth.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/25/8...ast-in-the-uk/ ...