Movie Downloads: Cinema Now Japan

CinemaNow Japan distributes video content to consumers through its website, Japan’s leading destination for legally distributed feature films and video on the Internet. Hollywood movies and popular TV shows are available for download. CinemaNow also makes movies available on a pay-per-view basis, providing customers a 24-hour window to watch the video. As with all CinemaNow downloads, customers can download the file and watch it anytime, anywhere on their PC or laptop. Furthermore, CinemaNow's most recent service enables consumers to legally download a complete DVD, play it back on PC and burn one copy of the file to a blank DVD disc.

**Reference: 2/28/07 Nikkei Sangyou Shimbun, CinemaNow

Universal Changes Distributor

Universal Pictures has announced in February that they have delegated their distribution rights to Toho-Towa, a subsidiary of Toho Co., Ltd, established in 1928. Prior to this engagement, Universal Pictures had been distributing their content through United International Pictures Far East, a joint corporate venture with Paramount Pictures. The first Universal Pictures film being distributed by Toho-Towa will be “Borne Ultimatum” and is expected to reach a vast number of Japanese consumers through Toho-Towa’s known excellence in the marketing field.

**Reference: 3/28/07 Nikkei Sangyou Shimbun

Kadokawa in the Spotlight

Kadokawa Group Holdings established a new company, Kadokawa Production, which will manage the copyright of their contents. Kadokawa’s works will be intensively managed, with the eventual licensing out of merchandising and screen rights. Kadokawa Production will also be responsible for new business ventures in areas such as character development and scriptwriter management. In addition, Kadokawa Pictures has also started movie downloading service online. Using BitTorrent, Kadokawa began to distribute ten of the movie series, such as the “Ring”, to U.S. customers starting February. They are planning to increase the Internet movie library to 200 by the end of this year. Currently, new releases cost $4, while you can borrow the classics for $3 each.

**Reference: 3/6/07 Nikkei Sangyou Shimbun, 3/15/07 Nekkei Net

Internet Movie Distribution

Although Japan’s downloading service for movies are falling behind the music and games, the number of consumers are increasing steadily. Last December, Shochiku Co., Ltd. established the movie download portal site “Cinelier”. Shochiku states that they are aiming to create a site amounting to “a movie sommelier” with movie descriptions as detailed as 3500 letters each. Each download will cost 367 yen ($3) and will be available for viewing for 7 days. Shochiku is planning to have over 100 selections by the end of this year.

**Reference: 2/4/2007 Yomiuri Shimbun

Anime Characters for Blogs

Production I.G., Trans Cosmos and Animo have joined together to create a new blog service “Decoblog”. The beta version launched on March 22nd of this year. They aim to attract 500,000 users within just three years. Production I.G. will allow several of its character properties to be used in the venture. Users can choose over 500 styles of these characters for their blogs. They exhibited their new service at the Tokyo Anime Festival, where they presented the Decoblog service with a promotional video and some trials for attendees.

**Reference: 3/9/2007 Nikkei Sangyou Shimbun, 3/9/2007 RBB Today

Sharing High Quality Animated Pictures

Viacom International Japan, a subsidiary of MTV Networks, announced the launch of its new FLUX video-sharing site for users in Japan. In addition to video created by users, FLUX features leading contents from MTVN including: Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob-SquarePants, MTV’s Europe Music Awards, Jackass and local MTV Japan productions such as Trainsurfer and Tempura, among others. Clips range from 3-10 minutes in length. FLUX was first launched in Japan in June 2005 as an entertainment service for mobile phone users. They have been broadcasting popular contents from MTVN, as well as original video content. The service is available on all three of Japan mobile operators - NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank - to more than 80 million people.

**Reference: 2/16/07 Nikkei Sangyou Shimbun, Viacom.com

First Cell Phone Scriptwriters?

In order to help develop new scriptwriters, Toei Co. will be starting a “Cell Phone Novel” site. Three Toei interns were chosen to post their original novels on a site, which allows consumers to download these novels onto their cell phones for free. The author of the book that attracts the most readers will be sponsored by Toei Co. to have their work filmed for a theatre or television release. This project will allow the corporation to promote their product before production, resulting in a low-risk original project created by the interns hired from within company.

**Reference: 3/14/07 Nikkei Sangyou Shimbun

Portable Game Report - 1000 Participant Survey

According to 1,000 people who participated in a survey conducted by the Nikkei Industrial News, so-called “intellectual games”, consisting of puzzles and quizzes, ranked the most popular game genre played on portable platforms. As for the location in which these consumers play their portable games, the “living room” of 66.4% and “own room” was 54.9% of the total vote counts. “While commuting” was less than 10%. The survey results prove that portable games are more popular than television in the living room.

**Reference: 1/5/07 Variety Magazine

Buy a Snack; Win a Sticker, Free Character Profile

Japan has been fanatical about Lotte’s “Bikkuri-Man” snacks ever since the 70’s. Every child raised in Japan would have known at least one classmate who was collecting the stickers contained in this snack, which portray characters of the classic anime “Bikkuri-Man”. With 84 varieties of these stickers, Lotte has come up with another idea to excite snack fans. Once the stickers are taken out of the package, consumers can take a picture of the sticker with their cell phones, and the phone will automatically connect to a site that shows the description of the character photographed. This new marketing strategy is expected to prove its success on Lotte’s future profit chart.

**Reference: 2/23/07 Nikkei Sangyou Shimbun

Manga Delivery on Your Cell Phone?

Takarajima Wondernet, a subsidiary of Takarajima Publishing, has licensed 300 manga books and carefully scanned each frame of the paper and ink versions to give users an instant library to download and read on their cell phones. The first of these, "Rocket Girl," was launched March 22, which was followed by "XX," on April 16th. Takarajima Wondernet plans to release a new title every month. Each manga series is split into 24 chapters on average, although it depends on the story. Each chapter costs 50 yen ($0.40) to download, although the total for the whole manga series is paid all at once in the beginning. Each week, a new chapter is automatically downloaded to the consumer’s phone, ready for them to read whenever they please. The manga novels are available to users on all Japanese cell phone networks.

**Reference: 3/22/2007 Nikkei Sangyou Shimbun, 4/25/2007 The Japan Times

Four Player Online Games for Cell Phones

A Tokyo Java developer, Dwango, has created a multiplayer real-time RPG called “Samurai Romanesque”, which can accommodate as many as 500,000 players. Players experience real-time weather, which is built into the game with the help from the Japan Weather Association. So if it's really raining in the area, your character might not be able to use firearms. Dwango also created an NTT Docomo client-friendly, free online RPG, “Meruru No Hihou”. This game can take up to four players at a time. Unlike online games, users cannot chat on the cell phone while playing. However, there is an official site for the users to chat to discuss their game plans.

**Reference: 2/8/07 Nikkei Sangyou Shimbun, 7/2001 Japan Inc.

Video Sharing Website, One Every Ten

The number of users on video sharing sites in Japan is increasingly rapidly. According to the Video Research Interactive, the number of annual visitors is now over 11 millions. Approximately one in every ten people in Japan is a user of these sites.

**Reference: 2/8/07 Nikkei Sangyou Shimbun

Gee Crest in the Spotlight

Gcrest, Inc., a Japanese PC game developer and publisher, founded in November 2003, has started a video advertising service on the game portal site Atgames. The first project that they have advertised was their Playstation 2 game “Simple 2000 Series (Vol.115) -The Life of Room-Sharing” on March 29th. Advertisements posted in virtual spaces, such as Second Life advertising, have been successful promotional tools in the U.S. Atgames is an online game portal site where you can enjoy multiple online games such as “Trickster+” and “Keiba Densetsu Live!”

**Reference: 2/23/2007 MSN News

Domestic Online Music Distribution: Cell Phones Take the Lead

The market for domestic online music distribution in Japan has been growing rapidly. According to the Recording Industry Association of Japan, the total profit of the market has increased 56% from last year with a total of $445 million. For the first time, Japan’s music market for downloads has surpassed single CD sales. However, unlike the U.S. music market, most of Japan’s music downloads are through cell phones. Cell phone music sales have increased 49%, while computer downloads recorded 2.7 times increase of the previous year. Fifty-five percent of U.S. music downloads are to computers, while 90% in Japan were through cell phones. Fifty percent of these are ring tones, with full-length ring tones recording 2.5 times increase from last year as well.

**Reference: 2/16/07 Nikkei Sangyou Shimbun, Recording Industry Association of Japan

Sale Strategy Change in Attempt Wide Age Range

On March 7th, the publishing industry was shocked by the simultaneous debut of three women fashion magazines on the same day: “AneCan” of Shogakukan, Inc., “Marisol” of Shueisha, Inc., and “Grace” of Sekai Bunkasha, Inc. “AneCan” focuses on 25 to 30 year-old females to cover the older crowds who were not satisfied with the other Shogakukan magazine, “CanCam”. They already sold 320,000 copies within the first five days. The other two magazines targeted an even older market segment.

**Reference: 3/26/07 Nikkei Sangyou Shimbun