Namco Bandai Holdings to Close Down 20 Japanese Game Centers

Namco Bandai Holdings. company president Shukuo Ishikawa revealed yesterday that 20 Namco owned, Japanese Game Centers (Arcades) are to be closed down by the end of March due to unprofitability. This comes to a 10% cut reduction to the amount of Namco owned game center facilities which is said to be at 225 at the end of last year. It's mentioned that the reduction in the average young person in Japan using cars and the upcoming April consumption tax increase for Japan will lead to an estimated 1 billion yen cost increase to the company year over year. Additionally, Namco have adjusted their March 2014 consolidated balance sheet with a downward revision from 29 Billion yen to 25.5 Billion yen due to the loss of these stores. Sales of 485 billion yen and an operating profit of 45 billion yen remains however.

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Japanese SoulCalibur II HD Online Tier List (1/31)

This is a tier list that was posted onto the internet by Michang who is a Japanese Soul Calibur player that I translated. Although Japan hasn't received the game in Japanese yet, (maybe some differences from say SC2 JP to PAL?) this might spark some interesting discussion and I hope to see more of this game from Japan when more of the players get access to it. Take a look at the tier list yourself below.

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Team Green Arcade Enters Matador Cup 5

It only took a few days but Japan has easily rounded up 280 players and filled up the 56 entry teams limit for the upcoming Matador Cup 5 tournament. Due to this exploding popularity with the tournament, MASTERCUP has added a'preliminary contest' that allows an additional 28 teams to enter the tournament. One of those 28 is team No.81 'TEAM GREEN ARCADEX鉄拳村' which is made up of S.Korea's Nin, Saint, JEONTTING (Jundding), Help Me and DejaVu. The team will have to win inside the preliminary contest to get into the first qualifier phase of the tournament making their mountain to climb even higher. More details below.

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Matador Cup 5 - Japanese 5on5 Tournament in A-cho Arcade Announced

Quietly announced at last years MASTERCUP.6 tournament, the official MASTERCUP website reveals Japan's next big Tekken tournament: "MATADOR CUP 5." Titled after famed Japanese player Matador, the 5on5 TTT2 tournament will be held in Kyoto's A-cho arcade on the 22nd of March and will have team limits capped at 56 teams allowing a maximum of 280 players in the tournament. In the announcement, Matador shares with us that he hopes to see a lot of the more unknown players with great talent in Japan come out and make a name for themselves on the tournament stage. Should more details on this tournament arise in the future (If there's no stream for this tournament, there will at least be archives on the MASTERCUP YouTube channel), I'll be sure to keep everyone posted.

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TTT2 - Nobi VS JDCR & Knee Tekken God Matches

Back on the first of November, you may remember that the Koreans (Saint, JDCR, Nin, Knee & Chanel) were over inside Japan's Namco Sugamo store for some deathmatching prior to MASTERCUP.6. The result of this was of course a long series of exciting matches that were all off stream that culminated in Japan finally getting it's first player that owns the 'True Tekken God' rank. Nobi recently decided to broadcast these matches onto his niconico site and I have it all archived below for everyone to see.

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