Two key Capcom executives explained their AI strategy to 4Gamer: 3,000 hours of QA collapsed to 72 hours by AI, 30,000+ hours of monthly autonomous playtesting, and a three-layer architecture combining Google's Gemini with Capcom's own art-director models. As the DLSS 5 backlash and ResetEra debates continue, here's why Capcom insists AI is for releasing creator potential, not making art, and why its no-AI-assets pledge predates the Nvidia row rather than answering it.
From August 2026, The Pokemon Company will use Japan's My Number national ID card to verify identity for Pokemon Center Online lotteries and select official tournaments. It's a hard counter to scalpers and impersonators, and an unintended wall against overseas collectors who have long worked around the system. Here's what changes.
NHK opens its drama vault to Netflix worldwide on June 22, 2026, with 19 titles rolling out through NHK’s 2026 fiscal year, ending March 2027. The first wave includes Taiga epic Strategist KANBE, instant-noodle origin story Mampuku, and Rakugo-themed Descending Stories. Here is why this Japan-only treasure trove is finally going global, and what is conspicuously missing.
Shueisha Games — the gaming arm of Japan's iconic Weekly Shonen Jump publisher — has reopened a worldwide pitch program with one striking condition: you don't need to be a game developer. Just a proposal and a portfolio. Here's what the deal actually looks like.
Yellow Magic Orchestra co-founder Haruomi Hosono will release his 23rd studio album 'Yours Sincerely' on September 11, 2026, via Ghostly International, and play his first U.S. shows in seven years: Radio City Music Hall in New York on September 16 and the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on September 20, with Toro y Moi guesting in LA. Here's why a Japanese musician in his late seventies is one of the most quietly influential figures in global pop.
Number_i has signed a label deal with Atlantic Records, completing the global infrastructure they started building with WME in February. Here's what the Atlantic deal adds, why being labelmates with Bruno Mars matters, and what the trio is actually planning.
Free iOS collection ONE-DOT GAMES, built on the minimalist concept Kenji Eno (D, Enemy Zero) left behind in 2009, launched on May 17, 2026. University students who never knew him are now carrying the torch.
Researchers at Kyoto University used Japan's near-total medical insurance database to trace esotropia (inward-turning eyes) cases from 2014 to 2019, the years smartphones swept the country. Incidence rose from 32.26 to 36.61 per 100,000 person-years; surgeries climbed from 3,061 to 3,743. The link with smartphone penetration is strong, the absolute rise is small.
Nintendo's first-party Switch 2 title 'Yoshi and the Mysterious Book' is reportedly built on Unreal Engine 5, a first for any Nintendo-published game. We unpack how dataminers cracked the case, why Switch 2's UE5 performance has been a worry, what this means for future ports, and whether this small platformer is quietly Nintendo's biggest engine pivot yet.
Japanese toy, video and game distributor Happinet reported its FY26 results, with video game segment profit surging 772% year-over-year to 2.2 billion yen (about $14 million). Behind the spike: Nintendo Switch 2 and its software lineup, plus the ripple effect of a console generation transition through Japan's entire game distribution ecosystem. Here's what was happening behind Nintendo's 19.86 million unit sell-through.
Tokyo's 19.7-meter Unicorn Gundam statue, an Odaiba landmark since 2017, will be dismantled at the end of August 2026, leaving Japan's capital without a life-sized Gundam for the first time in nearly two decades.
