Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Swine Flu and E3

Going through today's gaming news, I came across a short blurb that said Square-Enix and Koei would not be sending its Japanese development teams to E3 due to swine flu fears. Apparently SONY and Nintendo aren't swayed and are sending full contingents of employees to work the show.

This seems a bit extreme to me. Living in Orange County, south of Los Angeles, I consider myself to be in the hotbed of "swine flu" but haven't heard about anyone I know who's contracted it.

I do know the Japanese tend to be a bit hysterical, especially when it comes to "foreign viruses," as evidenced by their usage of face masks. Of course, it takes a lot more than a face mask to prevent a person from becoming sick, so why bother?

I suppose this cuts down on the amount of news that will be available on new Dynasty Warriors titles, but one only has to go play through a couple of older installments in the series to know what the new one's going to be about. Koei has always seemed to have been a company that's been a one-trick-pony, milking its Dynasty Warriors franchise for all it's worth.

Regarding Square-Enix, I hope the absence of the Japanese developers won't detract from news about the next Final Fantasy.

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