Oriental Dispatch: ai sp@ce, iA, ARis

Konnichiwa(hello!). I picked up some interesting services in Japan.

ai sp@ce

Dwango, a game developer for mobilephones, has launched http://aisp.jp/ this week. "ai sp@ce" is a virtual world. It's kinda lobby for game lovers. You can't create buidings or clothings in this world, but create game-scenarios and can sell them. Quite interesting.

iA

Sega, a famous videogame developer, is testing an avatar service called "iA(Internet Adventure)".

It's similar to weblin or RocketOn, but at iA, avatars appears on your desktop(like wallpaper). When you change URL of your web-broser, the place in iA will change automatically. I mean each URL has its own place.

iA is still in closed beta.

ARis

Last one is not a virtual-world-thing. But I guess many readers will have an interest in it.

"ARis" is kind of a virtual pet using Augumented Reality. A small girl appears on PC via web camera. You can poke her with sticks or give clothes.

Its price is 9800 yen(US$9.8 US$98.00). A little bit expensive?

UPDATE: Sorry, i made a mistake at the price of ARis. Thanks to shiela-san for letting me know that.

Football Manager 2009 Preview

Football (or Soccer to some) is big business. So are football games. Millions worldwide play football games, or (more my taste) football management games. The new season has just started, so it's time for a new release as well.

One of my favorite games to play is the si-games "Football Manager" and september 3rd they gave away some details on the 2009 edition. One of the biggest changes is they've added some 3D gameplay, of which I'm not sure is a good thing. The Fifa Manager (by EA Games) already has this, but I'm not sure how it would work in the FM. What I've noticed is that EA has a whole different architecture which makes Fifa Manager a lot faster than the FM which has one big player database. Perhaps (and hopefully), database improvements are implemented as well in the 2009 edition, as this was my biggest problem with the 2007 and 2008 versions.

Announcement Video 1

Announcement Video 2

So why should you choose Sega / Sports Interactive's Football Manager over EA Games' Fifa Manager?

Fifa has a few plusses: It's faster, it's more graphical, you can do more with your stadium, create a personal life as a coach, but it has one big issue: It's interface is sloppy. What I mean is this: In Fifa I have a hard time finding all player stats, finding suitable new players, compare them etcetera, all the things that are the very essence of a football management game. So, even though Football Manager is less graphical, it's interaction design is a lot better.

Looking forward to the release on November 14th!

Nintendo - Xbox and Playstation sighted in SL

First of all a few random islands I've spotted today. One is a new telecom company in SL, Swisscom (Telecom provider from Switzerland) (SLURL). Aside from this sure thing there are two islands look to be holding new business as well, Generali (Banking)(SLURL) and Carpe Diem (Beds of Sweden) (SLURL) may also hold new businesses.

Secondly I ran into a cluster of islands that bring a promise of fierce competition, these islands are called:

1. Nintendo
2. Nintendo Wii
3. Microsoft Xbox
4. Sony
5. Sony Playstation
6. Sega

Finally, Sony has been present with its music division, Sony BMG at the Millions of Us cluster island 'Media' but looks like they're gearing up as well in the Japanese quarters with a sim called Sony Home Pictures (SLURL).