DDR X2 (AC) (International)

There had better be a damn good reason if they push it back; October's almost 2 years since X was released!

Luckily we were able to spot Naoki Okada VP of US Amusement for KDE and had a sit down with him to discuss the latest on Bemani in the US. Okada turns out to be an extremely friendly and easy to talk to person. We found out that X2 will indeed have a modified platform with much higher quality panels and sensors, although costs are still an issue, wood will still be used in some parts of the pad. We spoke about location tests; He informed us that Betson is very pressing about soft aka secret location tests, which are aimed only for the general population. We explained that our fan base knows about these types of location tests and agreed that we should respect the efforts of this test to not spread information once these tests are spotted. We agreed that both hard/publicly known tests and soft tests should coexist to not alienate the fan base. Sadly, he informed us that UBeat will be an unlikely title for the US with a majority of the problem being that the cost of the cabinet is too high for the US market and that converting this cabinet into something cheaper will still result in too high of costs. Many people do not realize that each of the 16 buttons on the cabinet are individual LCD’s which alone makes for a very pricey unit. Last, we discussed eAmusement availability. Konami will still very much like to roll eAmuse out to arcades. Brunswick has apparently fallen through and they are having difficulties finding a partner to help make this happen.

There’s definitely a storm brewing here.. Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero Arcade were both absent from the show floor. It seems that the ASCAP group, which handles licenses rights for artists with public performance, has put their foot down and was not allowing the game to be shown. It is also rumored that machines certain locations have disabled/unplugged their machines due to this issue. This is a very scary time for arcade music games. If the ASCAP gets its way it will definitely be looking at other titles to demand money from. We are waiting for a more through report from another group on this issue, which will cover more legal aspects and details.

Note this paragraph from the report, though:

Basically, we could never see another DDR game again regardless of what Konami or Betson does.
And of course, the first comment on BMS says this is 100% Betson's fault.

How is that possible, it isn't like Konami takes these songs without permission to use in their games, what's the whole point of licensing music then.

You have a source for this?