Jamin Smith of SmashPad writes:
"Job placements posted on the company website reveal that Square Enix is building a brand new studio in Los Angeles, for the supposed development of an action-orientated original IP. Seems that a lot of time and money is going into the pursuit of this western market, and Square Enix is certainly a big enough company to make it work.
After the announcement that Final Fantasy XIII was being released on the 360, and now the outward declaration from Yamamoto that the company plans to muscle into the Western market, Square Enix could become quite a power in the publisher war. Activision and Take Two better watch their backs, the Japanese giant is on the move."
EK Cooling allegedly has slipped itself into a hot soup of seemingly endless financial woes, where it has not paid its staff, suppliers, and contractors for many months as the company is facing liquidity problems and a surplus of inventory left unsold, stuck in the warehouse for a more extended period. Gamers Nexus investigated these claims made by former and current personnel, where he found trails of unpaid bills lasting as long as three to four months and unpaid raises that accumulated for almost a year.
EK Water Blocks has two entities—a Slovenian-based headquarters and a US-based subsidiary, EK Cooling Solutions. Steve narrated the series of events in detail, stating that the company was reportedly irresponsible and negligent regarding payment. Consequently, partners and employees are forced to share the burden of alleged mismanagement. It all begins with its extensive range of products, leading to a surplus of goods. EK has over 230 water blocks, 40 liquid cooling kits, 85 reservoirs, 40 pumps, 73 radiators, and 212 miscellaneous accessories.
Yes this is not about video games directly but indirectly this will impact the pc gaming/workstation space hard.
This company is massive one of two in the water cool space so if it goes poof then thousands out there have no spare parts or half built computers.
SO yeah i know not about a video game but think of it as amd leaving the pc space but this is ekwb that could be leaving water cooling in the pc space
Jayz2cents a supporter of there products also has issues
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
As someone that has built a watercooling rig. EK is big, but there's so many numerous watercooling part companies out there. EK's stuff isn't exactly amazing quality for the price compared to others either, it's just ok. Much like Corsair. The impact would be negligible long term. For perspective the majority of my parts are XSPC, at most I use EK for my gpu waterblocks and fittings. Both easily replaceable.
Rob Webb of KnowTechie writes: We're still waiting on the details, but this video game adaptation promises to be seriously creepy.
INDIE Live Expo, Japan’s premiere online digital showcase series , will debut never-before-seen games & content updates across more than 100 titles on May 25th.
If I'm not mistaken, Square Enix is becoming increasingly Western, and with good reason. Japan's market is shrinking dramatically. I don't have their numbers on hand, but their sales have bee dropping while the Western markets are growing. It only makes smart business sense to go where the money is. That 10 Most Jarring quotes article had a quote from Hideo Kojima who said it best:
"Unfortunately, overseas game production companies, which are well-funded and extremely skilled, have surpassed us by a couple of steps. It was once said that Japan molded the world's video game [industry], but that's becoming a thing of the past. Sad as it may be, it's the truth."
It's sad, but the fact is, the Japanese have kind of fallen off :-\
Depends on how next year treats SE financially.
Didn't Square once have a studio in the US that they closed down? In fact, I think they've flirted with that a couple of times. But it's obvious now that a lot of Japanese studios are shifting major focus overseas.
It's not surprising. North America is becoming increasingly important, but at the same time western design themes are kind of making a pretty big impact in even traditionally Eastern developers. Square very much showed its interest with the changed battle system in FFXII and by even developing FFXI.
We discussed a lot of this here: "The Rise of Western Game Design" http://www.gamer20.com/feat...
Personally, I'm a big fan of straight JRPGs. I'm not such a big fan of the Western style so I'm kind of concerned by this. I think they would never fully ignore Japanese tastes, obviously, but the thought of less JRPGs makes me sad.