Video game industry feels Earthquake's effect
Last week's catastrophic Tohoku earthquake resulted in the suspension of online game servers, game delays, and even an outright cancellation.
As the accounting of the terrible impact of last week's massive earthquake off the coast of Japan and subsequent tsunami and aftershocks continues, we're starting to learn the impact on the video game business. Online servers have been temporarily suspended to conserve electricity (this includes the Final Fantasy servers as we reported this morning), games have been delayed due to disruption of distribution channels, and others delayed or even canceled most likely out of sensitivity for the scale of the personal tragedy caused by this national disaster.
Japanese gaming site andriasang has been following the situation and reports the following developments in a series of stories on the site:
- Konami suspends Metal Gear Online service to conserve energy: The official game site and twitter feed state that the service will be down to conserve power. When they will come back up is listed as TBD.
- Sony delays Motorstorm 3's Japanese release: Citing "various circumstances" the release date has been changed to TBA.
- Disaster Report 4 cancelled: While no reason was expressly given, publisher Irem issued an apology. Given that the game was based on escaping from a city devastated by an earthquake, the decision was likely made out of respect for the many families feeling the very real effects of the Tohoku quake.
- Microsoft delays products, cancels Kinect tour: Though not headed to the north-eastern part of the country, the Kinect experience tour was canceled, and Dragon Age Origins Awakening delayed due to distribution disruption.
- Yakuza of the End delayed: Sega changed the March 17 release date TBA also citing "various circumstances." In a blog post, Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi confirmed that the delay was made in consideration of the earthquake.
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replyComment on Video game industry feels Earthquake's effect, by Garnett Lee.
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Brief recap of the industry impact of the Tohoku earthquake compiled from a number of stories on adriansang.com
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I have worried about this since I played Dark Sun Online way back when. I wish businesses considered such things when placing their companies and servers. Most seem to be right in earthquake land of California.
More geological placement of online companies should be a consideration when creating one, or even moving server centers.-
If you are afraid of earthquakes, you must live in the midwest. I think you are foolish for living there despite knowing full well that there could be a tornado or flood. :)
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Take it from me, there is no safe zone.
I was in the 89 California earthquake, in Orlando for 92's hurricane Andrew, in 93 I lived on the Mississipi river in southern Missouri, and in 1998 a series of tornadoes hit downtown Nashville at which time I was of course living.
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Never move to my area.
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Should be more like curseofdragons amirite?
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Actually, that sounds like a series of bad places in which to live, disaster-wise. Cities like Boston or Chicago are relatively immune to any serious trouble.
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Michigan ftw. Very few poisonous things, very few tornadoes, no earthquakes of consequence...worst you have to deal with here is people who don't know how to drive in snow.
Floods are easy to avoid by not living right next to rivers. Harder to do if you're a farmer, but otherwise it's pretty easy. Hurricanes are easy to avoid as well. Yep...if you're worried about it at all, there are plenty of weather and geologically "safe" areas.
I agree...I don't think it'd be that hard to put servers and that type of infrastructure in less disaster-prone areas. The worst part is, they'll rebuild everything in the same places and make some contingency plans, but the next disaster will be different and none of it will matter.
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Costs of a once in a lifetime natural disaster vs constant savings on labor, land, energy, etc over decades in certain places.
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I think a lot of businesses in Japan are shutting down anything that needs a lot of electricity, regardless of where in Japan the reside. If their electric grid if largely interconnected, they the draw is nationwide, not just local or regional. That would explain many data centers (clients really) shutting down even if they were not in the earthquake or tsunami hit areas.
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[deleted]
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I'll dispatch my Japanese correspondent straight away. ;)
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There is a little site called DrudgeReport and regardless if you like it or not, all it is a cut and paste job and it is one of the most visited sites on the net. I am glad Garnett decided to put the stories in one place for easy reference. If you want a video game cover reporter to go knock on the doors of these studios go for it Lightzout and bring your radiation suit.
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Sort of a bummer that disaster report/zettai zetsumei toshi was canceled. It's actually a cool series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6xa2nVpERI
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