The imminent arrival of streaming services such as Google STADIA and Project xCloud has led us to think about what will happen with consoles, thinking that these proposals will achieve massive success. However, although some consider an unfavorable scenario for dedicated hardware, there are those who think it will withstand the attack, such as the director of Koei Tecmo.
During an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Hisashi Koinuma, CEO of Koei Tecmo, talked about streaming services and the impact they could have on the console sector. In that sense, the manager said that although it is possible that these services enjoy a lot of success, the consoles will continue in the market.
There could be a time when streaming can overwhelm the consoles, but I do not think that dedicated hardware dies in the long term, I trust it will continue to expand.
On the other hand, the Koei Tecmo manager considered that streaming services will be successful in underdeveloped countries, where consoles and smartphones do not have such a presence. He also said that it is likely that the same thing happened when it was said that mobile gaming would kill the consoles.
Streaming has great potential for developing countries, where ownership of the consoles is still low and the phones that they have are not powerful enough to run the games we do for the main markets. STADIA can present high-end games to these people, and I hope some of them are intrigued enough to go to consoles. Many used to say that mobile games would kill the console. They didn’t. In fact, they helped the console market grow.
In other news, one of the ongoing legal conflicts that started about 5 years ago between Resident Evil devs Capcom and Koei Tecmo over an alleged patent infringement of intellectual property by Koei Tecmo has not been forgotten and wages on.
As you will remember, these 2 Japanese companies have been in conflict since 2014. A new chapter of this dispute was held today and resolved in favor of Capcom.
As read in a recent press release, Capcom won a patent lawsuit against the fellow countryman Koei Tecmo. This happened after the Superior Court of Intellectual Property determined that Koei Tecmo infringed the 2 patents of Capcom Patent A (#3350773) and Patent B (#3295771).
Because of this decision, Koei Tecmo will have to pay a massive fine of ¥ 157,000,000 (that is about $1.5 million) to compensate for legal damages and unforeseen expenses.
Capcom and Koei Tecmo had already faced each other in another chapter of this legal battle. In 2014, Capcom originally filed the first lawsuit with the Osaka District Court, mentioning the infringement of said patents. However, the judge at that time only acknowledged that Patent B was infringed, for which he sentenced a fine to Koei Tecmo for about $50,000 and years later a court dismissed the counterclaim that Koei Tecmo prepared against Capcom.
Recently, in a second battle, 5 years after the original, the current judge added the infringement to the other patent and Capcom managed to get a greater fine for the Japanese company Koei Tecmo to pay.
