Namco Invades SoCal Regionals
Aris ON Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 10:18AM 
"The community asked and we listened, NBGA is bringing the latest Tekken Tag Tournament 2 arcade build to SCR! There will be casual stations for all fighting game fans to try out the newest Tekken title which is making some noise worldwide. For all you hardcore players, we got you, in place of Tekken 6 we are now featuring a $1,000 TTT2 tournament sponsored by NBGA and powered by Level Up Your Game!
Last but definitely not least, NBGA has been working hard on getting fan service delivered this year and to top off their latest efforts they’re bringing a playable version of Soul Calibur V to SCR! This is amazing news for our region to get first hands-on experience with such an epic game! Make sure you stop by the Namco Bandai Games booth and take advantage of all the attractions from gaming, tournaments, and even merchandise from their Club Namco store!
“We are really excited to be at SCR to share TEKKEN TAG TOURNAMENT 2 and SoulCalibur V. The community has been waiting patiently for this opportunity and we feel that it’s time to give more power to the players”- Rich "FilthieRich" Bantegui"
Register HERE.
Watch the stream HERE.
Reader Comments (20)
Damn. The finalized TTT2 build + SC5? That's too good ^^
so i made this point on facebook, and i felt it would be good to bring it up here...
This is a huge waste of money for namco. straight up. I've never seen a company with their priorities as screwed up as namco has theirs right now.
So is a $1,000 tournament going to get good players to come out for a game they have only played in limited doses? maybe. Will it maybe get a few more people interested? maybe.
but $1000 worth more people? not to mention how much money it takes to ship these units around? while you're having tounraments, what about the casual player that wants to get his hands on it... you're just taking away from him. and the biggest issue is that this is going to be at a multigame tournament. not only are you spending roughly $2-3k to set this up, plus if they are giving overhead to levelup, they are putting up that much money to play AT BEST 3rd fiddle to UMVC3 and SF4:AE with a game that isn't even going to be out for a year. AND you don't even NEED to have a tournament for it. PEOPLE WILL PLAY YOUR GAME FOR FREE. people want to give you money to play your product, there is 0 logic in putting up a G for something that doesn't need it.
all the while, Tekken Hybrid came out yesterday, and almost 0 promotion went into that, and that is something that EVERYONE can walk out to the store and can get, it has a TTT2 demo in there, and it MAKES namco money. Namco and Tekken team didn't even blast announcements on their twitter or facebook pages for 5 days prior to the release, and that is FREE ADVERTISING. there was no word about it, and most of the people i know in the FG community didn't even know about it, INCLUDING some tekken players.
making it clear that i'm not saying this out of jealousy, i was saying it weeks before hybrid was out, but namco is failing hard right now with money for something they won't see a return on. it makes me mad to see a company that doesn't understand basic shit like promote the things that are going to make you money, and don't pay for something you can get for free. Who ever made this decision and allowed it to get to this point have serious priority issues, all the while more and more tekken players leave the scene...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSeGpVP58bU
Ask them when they plan to fix things like the above.
P.S; Am I the only one who feels a bit creeped out when Filthyrich just speaks of himself as 'we' these days (namco collective)? Borg motherfucker.
WE GOT YOU?
Damn, some of you Tekken players are never happy. I saw the same bitching when they brought TTT2 out to SDCC. Who cares what Namco is spending their money on, you should be happy it's going towards Tekken. The company makes hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you really think they're hurting over a couple of grand to help promote their products? How is this a bad thing?
Also, the casual player isn't going to events like SCR, nor are they losing anything since TTT2 won't be out anytime soon on console. Plus Namco will make that money back on the sales of the actual games when it does come out.
As for playing 3rd fiddle, who cares. It hasn't stopped Aksys or Atlus for putting up money towards their respective games. And any game not named SF or Marvel has been playing the 3rd fiddle for a while now, so that's not something new. Make the most out of it instead of crying about money.
well, you seem pretty closed minded overall, so let me put it to you this way:
imagine if they took those thousands of dollars and invested it in a server so that people could play TTT2 in arcades? which ones would do more for the company and the community?
its their money. it doesn't mean they are using it stupidly.
I'll be in line for sc5 all day
great cant wait for the stream
when 5.0 hit the arcades, it was everywhere and it had ports to use your own device to play, a card system with 1 card per character, and life was good.
5.1 was like ok, fixed the bs, still everywhere just a little upgrade, cool.
dr was a kit to the 5.0 machines that owners had to buy and install, so some where in some were out. still had the ports for your own controller.
then comes t6. no u.s. arcade release. no controller ports. 1 card per character. limited accessibility - maybe about 10 AT THE MOST places had it in the u.s.
t6 br comes out as an upgrade to the imported only arcade versions.
t6 br comes out on console. no national tournament. graphics are watered down. net play is meh.
and now this. hype and unhype on ttt1 hd with no online play as of yet and ttt2 what, years away from a console release while japan levels the fuck up. no ports to use your own stick or pad.
what the fuck namco. yes you make a gorgeous arcade game, but make it accessible to10% of the market? interesting. well played.
@Subt-L: Spending a couple of thousand is not as big a hit as $30k or $100k's worth of units being shipped out. It's just one machine, the loss is miniscule. And obviously, the fact that this is the final build vs a demo is strong enough a reason to draw in a bigger crowd. For newcomers: they'll see the complete game, get interested, buy Hybrid. And you said it yourself. Zero-promotion went into Hybrid. But it's there and people can buy it, and they do.
If you question this practice, then you should question phone companies too. They more often than not offer mobile phone contracts at a loss per-unit sold. But why do they keep doing it? Because they're betting that more people will buy and pay the monthly charges to level out their inital losses. Other companies promote their shit with free giveaways too, all-year round. If they still do it then it must be doing something right. I don't see how this is a problem with 'priorities' ...
Namco spending their money for servers in the USA? I'm sure Harada already said that the team is already looking into that. But you have to realise, if it's going to be thousands of dollars spent just so that 3 or 4 arcades in the USA can play the game, then that is a much bigger loss down the track.
"its their money. it doesn't mean they are using it stupidly." -> ????
tldr; You gotta spend money to make money.
I'm very open minded subt-L, but I am also realistic about what's going on with fighting games and Namco's arcade business. It would cost alot more than a couple of Gs for server infrastructure outside of Asia and upkeep. And all for what? Just so a few people in 3-4 locations can play Tekken? The people without arcades are still assed out. Casual players are still assed out. So either way, only a few people are still going to benefit.
WE GOOOOOOOOOOOT YOU
but its still okay to shuttle around arcade machines from coast to coast, from tournament to tournament, yet the product they invested at least a few million into doesn't even get promotion. and its usually 3-4 machines that get moved.
its easy to cover for them, but at the end of the day, what lies on namco's priority list is wrong.
even if it was in arcades in america, it would still be better than having 1 time deals at tournaments. you would:
a) have local communities that could create content for the american audience
b) still have the same issue with most people not having access to the game
c) wouldn't be spending money bringing a game from location to location that isn't making you money
d) could be making money selling a select few units to americans
what would be better? namco throwing $20,000 at comiccon or spending $20,000 on a server and having exposure and working on improving the community. and as a rule, you cannot say "only a few locations" or "the rest of the country won't reap from it" because if you're only going to show it off at tournaments, the "only a few locations" and "the rest of the country" issues are even more limited, when you add "once in every few months" issue.
and i just want to make it clear:
i'm not so much upset with the lack of arcade version here. personally, i'll make due.
but as someone who runs the only tournament for tekken, namco is making it very difficult to do that. as someone who works on promoting their game and trying to help out the community, it sucks to see them take such a lackluster approach to hybrid. i'm disappointed that namco marketing will sit back and not do what they need to do to make their title a success.
hybrid should have been the starting point, yet they didn't even bother doing anything with it. one day before hybrid's release before the facebook page was promoting an sfxt event as opposed to their own product. a day after, they are announcing a $1000 tournament for a game most people haven't even played. atlus had 4 kof posts on srk front page, while the only namco news was that ttt2 vita leaked images. most video game sites didn't even have hybrid on their radar.
i personally have a vested interest as someone who has lost thousands of dollars and man hours organizing and running a tekken-centric tournament series, spending thousands of dollars in capture and cam equipment to promote their game, and someone who has spend thousands traveling to evens capturing video, watching a camera instead of enjoying events, i might be a bit more passionate than other people on this issue. but i don't think i'm overreacting when i question their reasoning, because businesswise, namco is not making the correct choices.
their poor choices are affecting the community in a negative way, and throwing money and tournaments at it aren't helping the vast majority in the long or short term.
Are you seriously crying about Hybrid? Who is taking Hybrid seriously competitively? If you want to spend money and man hours trying to do something for Tekken, then that is your decision. But what was Hybrid going to be the starting point of Tag 2 demo tournaments?
What goes on SRK's front page has nothing to with Namco or Atlus. KOF is in the news because the game came out on console yesterday. What Tag 2 news are you expecting them to post? Plus news on SRK is going to be centered around 2D games anyway, so why you mad about what goes on their front page?
I wish Soulcalibur got half the support Tekken gets from Namco, but I spend my money supporting the game because I love the game and the community that plays it, not because I want to make money. That's what a job is for. Stop crying.
we GOT You
Hybrid isn't even a lot of work, charging $40 for a demo, movie and a graphically updated version of TTT? Promoting TTT2 and SCV for just a couple of Gs seems like a good way to promote a product. Namco is sponsoring Socal's regionals, which is more promotion for namco.
Just be happy, wish i could be there ^^'
Dudes are never happy. We fiend for some TTT2 play and then when it comes, people bitch.
filthie 'fuckin' rich
you only like ttt2 prologue if your character is in it. Thanks NAMCO, YOU GOT US