PluggedIn: Brain games, fortunes, pets entice Japan players

TOKYO (Reuters) - Respect for the Aged Day in Japan is not typically a cash cow for gamemaker Nintendo Co Ltd, but this year a bump in sales of its DS portable game machines was proof enough that electronic games are attracting a broader range of players.

The DS machines were purchased for older family members, so they could play games designed to strengthen brain power.

One so-called brain-training game offers three brief tests that might measure memory, calculation, or quick-response skills to indicate how close the player's brain is to the "ideal age" of 20.

The game, developed under the guidance of a brain imaging professor, claims to make players smarter and their brains younger with just a few minutes of daily training.

"The DS brain-training game is definitely one of our best sellers," said Nobutoshi Abe, who heads the game section for Japanese electronics retailer Bic Camera's flagship store in Yurakucho, a Tokyo business district.

"A lot of older women buy the game. They buy the DS player just so they can play," Abe said.

Next to the already popular racing, adventure and role-playing games, a new category is appearing in stores, hoping to catch the eye of young women, older businessmen, novices, or those who have not played since Super Mario Brothers caused a sensation more than 20 years ago.

Since the launch in May, Nintendo has sold over 700,000 copies of the Japanese game, whose title roughly translates as "DS Training to Strengthen Your Brain". There are high hopes next year for an overseas English version.

Sega, which makes the same game for Sony's Playstation Portable, sold nearly 72,000 copies in the first 10 days of its launch in Japan in late October, according to a monthly study by Enterbrain, which publishes leading Japanese industry weekly Famitsu.

"The key phrase for everybody in this industry at this moment is actually grow the industry as opposed to try and come up with the next million-seller hit for consoles, because that's been done and it's not expanding the market pie," said Hiroshi Kamide, a Tokyo-based game analyst for KBC Securities.

Fighting a saturated market

The US$25 billion global game industry is still growing, helped in large part by the popularity of PC and mobile games. But the console market itself has been growing only in the low-single digits, said Kamide.

The situation is of particular concern in Japan, where the market, after peaking in 2001, has been in decline.

"However much people talk about record-breaking in the game industry... it's still not in the same league as cinema or other types of content," said Kamide. "In order to make that jump, it's going to have to start from the grassroots up."

While Nintendo is also betting on casual gamers to expand the market with its next-generation console "Revolution", both companies seem to be targeting new players now mainly through games for portable game players.

"A lot of families buy one portable device per child as opposed to one console hooked up to a television for everybody," said Masatsuka Saeki, executive vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment Japan. "There's a big difference in numbers."

Sony just released two unusual games for its Playstation Portable including "Fuku Fuku Shima," a fortune-telling game, and "Talkman," which comes with a microphone and tests pronunciation in Japanese, English, Korean and Chinese in addition to delivering spoken phrases in those four languages.

Bic Camera's Abe said "Fuku Fuku Shima" was attracting young women, while mostly businessmen in their 20s and 30s were buying "Talkman," which is recommended for overseas travel.

Sony's plans next year include launching a game called "Portable Resort", which lets users take a virtual vacation and can serve as an alarm clock or be displayed on a nightstand like a picture.

"This trend toward casual games is a Japan phenomenon because it's a saturated market...but Nintendo's theory is that every market will reach the same point," said Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Enterbrain.

In addition to brain-training games, "Nintendogs," the virtual puppy adoption-training-showing game, has been a global hit and Nintendo expects to ship more than four million copies by the end of December.

"What the casual gamer wants is something that is challenging but challenging in a more provocative way," said Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing, in a phone interview with Reuters.

Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles.