R.I.P. Programmed World

The real ball flicker for me is that the arcade here in NZ was actually going to FINALLY get pendual and voltex 3... Then this happened.
To make matters worse. No R1 in NZ... God damn it...

Hahahaha...brilliant.

I'm glad Programmed World lasted as long as it did, and gave me the experience to play games I never thought I could play. I wish I could have played Sound Voltex Booth before all of this, but oh well. It was fun.

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Thanks for all the repeat quotes of my Banner...Speaking of Banners...//

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Even in 2222, Konami will sue

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I have 2077 Paseli im gonna PREMIUM FREE like there's no tomarrow

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i dont quite get this saltiness toward konami... what if shutting down PW means they will bring official Eamuse here? i mean maybe they heard our crys for attention and are just going to go here have the official stuff instead of a "bootlegged" version

you're a funny fella
you should be a comedian

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i lold hard when i was typing it but for real though you never know

Believe me, I would LOVE for it to be the case, but from a business standpoint, it's highly illogical that it'll ever happen.

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im glad R1 is like 4 hrs away

Konami had what to gain from shutting this down? More lack of money from people who aren't going to fly to Japan just to play DDR...? Sure, if they were going to release playable cabinets in western areas, this would make marginal sense, but um... not as torn about losing PW as people who've actually played it; just scratching and shaking my head.

Veering off topic and probably asked to death, but what's keeping Stepmania safe, anyway?

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It feels like this

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Stepmania is safe because the base program is unique enough and doesn't contain Konami ip. IIRC though SM 3.9 did eventually get some flak from Konami since it had the likeness of DDRMAX.

I'm sure Konami could bring down Stepmania if they tossed enough lawyers at it though. It would certainly shoot themselves in the foot overall, but events like this sort of make me wonder a little. I can't imagine there being a significant loss (if even any) in revenue due to the operation of Programmed World. Unless perhaps Round1 felt like it was suffering losses.

Either way though, the operators of PW did a great deed to the western Bemani community and deserve a great deal of gratitude. Even though we did not have the opportunity to have a PW-enabled location, I owe my thanks to the awesome people that helped keep things bustling and exciting in the community.

It's a shame to see it go, but it was certainly fantastic while it lasted. Many thanks for your contribution PW devs!

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Playing DDR 2014 was a lot of fun. Lucky for me, there's going to be a R1 in San Jose.

Nothing but thanks for the PW staff.

One can only hope this means Konami will "reboot" BEMANI games for NA/EU, even if they make them arcade-only like Pump It Up.
The only reasoning for this, hopefully, is because their IIDX/DDR machines that officially have E-Amuse support at every Round1 location have been far more popular/well-recieved than they expected, and maybe, just maybe, they are planning on making a North American version of those games with a different distrubutor (Raw Thrills would be a good choice, considering they are one of the few remaining companies still making new games, and they have worked with Konami and Activision on Guitar Hero Arcade).

If that's not the case, even in the slightest, then they deserve every ounce of the "Fuck Konami" posts that are on this thread, since those who do not have access to a R1 location are getting shafted from this.

With all that said though, kudos to the people who kept PW running as long as they did; crossing my fingers a new group of people will make a successor soon.

The people that are hit hardest are the people that don't even have R1 locations in their country.

I'm talking about locations that are in the UK, Europe and Oceania itself. With PW gone, the only options for us are:

1. Travel to the US Round1 locations.
2. Travel to Japan/Asia.

We can all hope that Konami will bring official eAMUSE over but personally I think that has a 0.00000001% chance of happening.

In Paris, we've just got new games which work with Programmed World... That's a big shame. As al2k4, I hope it means they will bring an officiel solution to Europe and America (but we're talking about Konami)

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On the bright side, the only other thing that affects arcades with PW (besides, you know, not having PW) is that they'll only have to downgrade the machines to games that came out around 2011-ish. IMO, this could have been much worse.

This is pretty lousy. I had access to Pendual only two hours away and would have access to Sunny Park, jubeat copious and DDR 2014 only an hour away.

Nothing we can do except hope Round 1 is a location test and Konmai will realize how much of a demand there is here in the states.

Steps to getting 100% official Konami games, e-Amusement, or just Japanese arcade games in general to work successfully in the U.S. Market...

1. Lobby U.S. legislation to ban ticket redemption games under the premise they are child gambling machines... and maybe cranes and direct-pays that have "automatic payout regulator" features.
2. Cause a chain reaction to bankrupt the existing arcade industry in the United States allowing for the Japanese arcade market design to succeed and flourish.

In short, while I think the BEMANI community in the U.S. is a little stronger than what I thought a few years ago, the numbers any legitimate video arcade game in the U.S. (not just music games) is inferior to that of ticket redemption games and direct pay games. For example, I operate an arcade in Northern Colorado and my stupid damn big walk-in giant crane game that I hate with a passion makes $4,000 a week on average. Which is more than all 17 of my video games in my arcade PUT TOGETHER! Sickening is it not?

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