DCharlie said:Akihabara still has it's high spots. But it's very hard to be enthusiastic about the place after 4 years of trawling the same stores.
Infact, it's only when i go back to the UK or Europe or the US that i realise that Akihabara is still great (even if it has declined greatly from what it was).
The thing is, Akihabara is changing rapidly. Yamagiwa soft burnt down (a store i didn't particularly like, but hey...) and high rise office and accomodation blocks are going up. This in turn is bring a whole new clientel into the area, and it's now that the major expansion industry in Akihabara is no longer video games, but p0rn.
Infact, a few articles recently have suggested that as the video games stores go out of business (and we have lost a LOT of stores in the last year or two) then the seedier business that can't afford Shibuya and Shinjuku rents, are now looking to expand down from Ueno and into Aki. The Japan times article went as far to predict that Akihabara would over the next year or two become a red light district (rather than red line)
Saying that, Super Potato (building on their awesome Osaka store) have just opened a branch in Tokyo. Making them instantly the best store in Akihabara at the moment, especially for retro based goodness. And i will show you guys it if i meet you in Aki.
Outlook wise, i don't know if i would say the industry is screwed just yet but the warning signs are there. Personally, i see it like this - each gen we are seeing costs rising for both the hardware and software developers. However, the thing that should sustain these expected increase in costs is -decreasing- for most people (ie: sales).
It's pretty easy to see that if you have a number of large companies creating big budget games, trying to appeal to a similar audience who now have a number of other things to spend their disposable income on (which has basically been frozen (or in some cases cut) for just about everyone in Tokyo for the last 3 years), that some one some where is going to get badly burned.
This isn't the Tokyo of the 2000 pre-bubble era where every Japanese person seems to be a walking back of spare 10,000 yen bills, where people were more inclined to try out more games (i guess DVDs weren't as . But hell, the signs are there that things are picking up. Just very very slowly.
Good post DCharlie. Very interesting points regarding Akihabara and the state of Japan. Do you feel that if someone wanted to take a vacation out there that they would be let down by all the negativity that has surrounded the country? For example, if somone had visions of going to the TGS or Joypolis and having a good time, would it not live up to their expectations once they arrived there because they already had a preconceived notion of how fun it would be? Are Joypolis, TGS and Namcoland as lively as I'm imagining it?
