Japanese publishers are expressing outrage after one of the country’s largest book distributors acknowledged selling large quantities of Japanese books to Anthropic, the American AI company behind Claude, raising concerns that the publications may have been destroyed and digitized for AI training without publishers’…
A Japanese game developer says nearly ¥200 million ($1.26 million) in unpaid development fees pushed the company into financial ruin, ultimately forcing it to lay off 70 full-time employees.
CyberConnect2 CEO Hiroshi Matsuyama has come down firmly on the side of an all-digital future for video games, arguing that the disappearance of physical games would have “nothing but positive effects” for developers.
Osaka’s foreign tourism numbers have fallen despite record numbers of visitors arriving from several countries, as a massive 59% decline in Chinese tourists outweighed growth almost everywhere else.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance developer Warhorse Studios hopes Grand Theft Auto VI will do more than sell millions of copies – it wants Rockstar’s blockbuster to make more expensive video games easier for the rest of the industry to sell.
Japan is making permanent residency considerably harder to obtain, with foreign applicants now expected to demonstrate an income above the average Japanese household as the government introduces stricter financial, pension and language requirements.
Touhou Project creator ZUN is giving fan creators another officially sanctioned way to commercially sell their doujin works, with Japanese publisher BookLive launching a new program that turns fan-made Touhou publications into commercially distributed e-books.
Persona may be one of Japan’s most recognizable RPG franchises, but the series now sells substantially more copies in North America than it does at home.
Sony is exploring a PlayStation controller that could double as a contactless payment device, allowing players to purchase games or in-game content simply by tapping a credit card or smartphone against it.
NieR: Automata became one of Square Enix’s biggest RPG success stories, but getting it made apparently required its developers to fight against expectations from inside the company – while director Yoko Taro tried his best to stay out of Square Enix’s way.
Nintendo has won $4.5 million in damages against a former moderator of Reddit’s r/SwitchPirates community who was accused of helping distribute hundreds or potentially thousands of pirated Nintendo Switch games.
Silent Hill is apparently heading back to the screen yet again, with Resident Evil producer Roy Lee now attached to a new adaptation of Konami’s horror series — just months after Return to Silent Hill arrived in theaters.
Armed Fantasia, the crowdfunded spiritual successor to Wild Arms, has had its development discontinued by publisher 505 Games’ parent company Digital Bros, four years after its Kickstarter campaign raised millions of dollars from fans.
Sony is reportedly asking game developers what they think about its controversial decision to stop producing physical PlayStation games, raising questions about whether the company could reconsider some part of its digital-only plan.
Microsoft has filed a patent application for a system that could interrupt games with advertisements after boss fights, quests, cutscenes and multiplayer rounds, effectively giving players blocks of gameplay time in exchange for watching ads and serving as the next big step for companies to milk as much cash out of…
Sonic the Hedgehog may be one of Sega’s most recognizable franchises today, but Sonic Team boss Takashi Iizuka says there was once a point when Sega higher-ups wanted to cancel the series entirely.
Light novel author Yomi Hirasaka, best known as the creator of Haganai: I Don’t Have Many Friends, has retired from the light novel industry — and unlike many departures that come after burnout or health problems, Hirasaka says his reason is considerably simpler: he achieved financial independence and retired early.