Brian @ Kotaku posted about the Cave's revolutionary new revenue sharing marketing for upcoming Arcade PCBs. Basically CAVE will provide free games to game centers willing to share the revenues coming from the games. It's a really interesting approach and I'm really curious how JAMMA association fits in since this Japanese association, with its high license costs (yes you need to pay em to distribute ana arcade game in Japan), is partly responsible for the decline of the arcade market in Japan... I suppose that the license cost is based on a % of the PCB price so CAVE probably is trying to bypass the JAMMA license fees...  The first revenue sharing game wil be DEATHSMILES 2.  I'm also curios if this announcement is in some way connected by the suddenly choise of the cult game center in Shinjuku MIKADO to remove EVERY Cave game... hmm... but probably this is just a shooting gamer paranoia...

Next year there will be another (and probably more revolutionary) announcement that will influence a lot, and possibily revive, the Japanese arcade business but since I'm under NDA I can't reveal anything...
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Today during the AM Show in Makuhari Taito showed the upgrade of the arcade version of HALF LIFE 2 (released in Japan last year in june). This upgrade will show up in a couple of days in Japanese Game Centers and features new weapons, new missions and new maps.