A 72 Years Old Japanese Gamer Said, “Games Have The Effect Of Reducing Crimes”

Shiro Suzuki is a famous Japanese announcer. However, he is also known as an “expert of the Capcom’s action game Resident Evil(Japanese name “Bio Hazard”)”. He got Nintendo Entertainment System at the year-end party of the TV program long ago. Then he has completely got absorbed in games.

Please watch this awesome video.

He appeared in a game program of Japanese video sharing site Nico Nico Douga, and told about Xbox360 game “Mass Effect 2″ on January 8.

He said, “I think that fighting and winning are one of the instincts of human being.”  Moreover, he quoted “Grand Theft Childhood(Kutner, Lawrence;Olson, Cheryl K.)” and said, “Young violence and sexual crimes decreased at the same time as games were popular in U.S.A. Therefore the games have the effect of canceling a bad desire.”

Furthermore, he said that the games worked well for his health. “On the action games I should pay attention around while driving a car. I need to move within a second. Cars are less responsive. So, that makes me easier to drive real cars after I started playing games. I want young people to play games to train themselves.”

The archives of the program of Nico Nico Douga to which he appeared is here. (The account of Nico Nico Douga is necessary. See our article on how to register and use Nico Nico Douga.)

He will turn 73 next month on February 10.

See also these articles:

Nico Nico Douga News [J]

Kotaku Japan [J]

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What we’re reading: How much is that social network in the window?

GigaOm: Seriously, who would really want to buy MySpace? – following the news that MySpace is cutting 47% of its workforce, it comes to no surprise that its owners News Corp. want to flog off the once-giant of the social networking world.  But it has few potential investors, say Bobbie Johnson, with MySpace’s 65 million users pale in comparison with Facebook’s users, nor does it have the utility of LinkedIn. (JL)

GigaOm: Only $50B? Facebook Stock Is Still a Steal: Tech News and Analysis - A forward PE of 42-50 puts Facebook in line with Amazon, Baidu and Netflix. Looks cheap on that basis! (WJI)

Asymco: More than 60 apps have been downloaded for every iOS device sold – Apps could overtake music as the main downloaded item on iOS devices. (WJI)

Channel NewsAsia: PM Lee says S’pore aims to be high-tech society - Singapore’s Prime Minister says Facebook and Groupon are attracted by Singapore’s high-tech environment — but they only opened sales offices here! (WJI)

The Malaysian Insider: Malaysian PM calls for more rules on Internet – Government regulation in the Malaysian Internet space looks increasingly likely when Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said on Thursday that unrestricted access to negative influences on the Internet would threaten Asian values. “Our children and future generations of Asean should retain their Asian cultural values and they must be protected from the threats on the Internet,” he said at the 10th Asean Telecommunications and Information Technology Ministers Meeting. (JL)

Apple Insider: Apple issues iOS 4.3 beta with Personal Hotspot, new multitouch gestures – Apple on Wednesday released the iOS 4.3 beta for the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. The update brings support for Personal Hotspot, new multi-touch gestures, and the ability for third-party applications to use AirPlay. Interestingly, Apple appears to have backed down on their mute-switch policy for the iPad, with a software option for changing the functionality of the iPad hardware switch included in iOS4.3. (JL)

Read it Later: The iPad is changing the way we read – The makers of the Read it Later app — an Instapaper competitor — carried out an interesting analysis on how iPad owners are turning away from reading Web articles on the computer in favour of mobile devices like the iPad. (JL)

Jakarta Post: RIM will ‘abide by law’ and give back – The standoff between Research in Motion (RIM) and the Indonesian government came to a quick conclusion after RIM’s managing director for Southeast Asia Gregory Wade said that RIM would filter pornographic content on BlackBerry devices and would cooperate with operators to ensure that the filtering would not disrupt connectivity to customers. (JL)

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TechBeat 7: Gadget porn

Join in the Malaysian tech podcast that brings together pundits and journalists from the country to talk about the biggest news and issues surrounding tech and media. This week, we have Chan Wern Shen, the editor for Malaysian tech forum Lowyat.net, who relates to us his crazy experience at CES 2011, while Harinder Singh from Tandemic brings to the pod his experience in the social media field.

Among the topics discussed are:

1) A round-up of what happened at CES 2011 in Las Vegas, including Microsoft’s announcements, the many tablet devices seen, and Motorola’s surprising resurgence in innovation.

2) Indonesia’s stand-off with Research in Motion (RIM) comes to a quick end, with RIM planning to comply with the Indonesian government’s requests to filter access to pornographic sites for BlackBerry customers in Indonesia.

3) The Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak engages with Malaysian Twitterers, encouraging them to ask him any question on the social network using #tanyanajib. Chaos ensues.

4) Soon after, Najib then warned of the consequences of unfettered access to the Internet, among them the decline of Asian values.

5) MySpace lets go of almost half its employees, and is shopping around for buyers. Will anyone take it?

Download this episode (right click and save), subscribe using iTunes or the RSS Feed

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Meeting Mark Zuckerberg in China

Ordinary Guys

The name is Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg. The phenomenon and mania that surrounds this man is incredible. With legions of loyal followers from investors to tech geeks, Mr. Mark Zuckerberg is now worthy of going down in history as one of the most influential people ever. Or even better, becoming immortalized in a board game trivia quiz question like “Who is the founder of Facebook?”  With a number of impressive stats and titles such as Time Person of the Year 2010 for “Connecting more than half a billion people” and named by Forbes as number 40 on the most powerful list and number 212 on the world billionaires list, at 26 years old, makes him the youngest richest person in the world with an estimated wealth of US$6.9B (at September 2010).

But all this noise about him rarely answers the inquisitive question of what he is really like as a person.  Late last year, Oprah took a sneak peek into Mark’s private life, showing his modest rented house in Palo Alto, San Francisco.  But none of us are Oprah and don’t have the same access to someone like Mark. Yet on his recent trip in December to visit China’s internet titans such as Baidu and Sina, my friend Yuancheng (Co-Founder of LBS Jiepang.com) had a chance encounter with the man himself. Like an excited little school boy meeting his idol for the first time, here’s what Yuancheng had to say…

“We both arrived early for our planned morning meetings with people in the same office building, were waiting in the lobby’s Cafe.”

Here’s how the dialogue went.

YC: “Hi, Mark! I’m a huge fan of yours, as well as Facebook’s.”

He was surprised that people recognized him… but then he smiled at me.

YC: “Can I take a photo with you?”

MZ: “Sure”

His girlfriend, Priscilla took the photo for us.

YC: “Thanks! I’m also doing an Internet start-up here in China.”

MZ: “Really? That’s cool! What’s it?”

YC: “We are creating Jiepang.com, a LBS.”

MZ: “Hmm…LBS?”

YC: “Location based service”

MZ: “Oh, location! Cool! Cool!”

YC: “We launched in May 2010, and now have nearly half million users.”

MZ: “That’s cool!!”

“Then I gave my name card to him and said thanks and good bye. I really feel like he is just an ordinary young person. Much more ordinary than I thought he would be! Mark uses the same iPhone as me, wears the same kind of hoodie and sneakers as me and also drinks the same priced coffee that I did! See? We are both ordinary young people. What Facebook and Mark has done, I believe Jiepang and I can also achieve!”

So there you go, for all of us hopeful, young entrepreneurs who want to create and build great companies there is hope. Mark Zuckerberg is after all, human.

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Social Gaming Platform Mobage-town Gets Monthly Price Plan For Virtual Items

Earlier this week, Japanese mobile social gaming juggernaut DeNA added a new pricing plan to its super-popular Mobage-town platform (which currently boasts 22 million users): users can now pay for virtual items through a monthly pricing plan.

This first so-called Premium Course on Mobage consists of two offerings, one for the hit game “Kaitou Royale”, and another one for avatars (by which each Mobage member must be represented).

Users subscribing for the first course can choose between four options (monthly cost: US$6 and up) to get items for use in Kaitou Royale, and what’s interesting is that some items in the game can’t be obtained in any other way. Monthly prices for the avatar-related plan, dubbed Aisatsu Premium Course, start at $2.40 (six options).

The obvious motivation for DeNA for adding subscription plans to per-item purchases (which are still possible for both Kaitou Royale and avatars) is to make spending money on Mobage easier for its members. The Premium Course is only accessible to NTT Docomo and KDDI au customers though: SoftBank subscribers and those visiting Mobage through their smartphones are left out at this point.

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