JVW

  

In Japan, New Year's Eve and New Year holidays are biggest event in a year. It is similar in the virtual world.

CygerAgent's virtual world "Ameba Pigg [J]" sold a lot of virtual goods on the end of the year and the beginning of the year.



The Japanese eats "Toshikoshi-soba" on the night of the New Year's Eve. (soba is thin Japanese noodle made from buckwheat flour)




CyberAgent sold 150,000 virtual goods of this Toshikoshi-soba in Ameba
Pigg. However, this doesn't become the profit of CyberAgent because it
was sold with a free virtual currency.



On the other hand, the Fukubukuro's profit is awesome!




Fukubukuro is the bag which unknown items were filled with. They are
sold with a discount price than the actual value. The Japanese purchases
these at various shops on New Year.

CygerAgent sold virtual Fukubukuro limited quantity only 2011 pieces.
There were only female avatar's items in them. However, virtual
Fukubukuro were sold out in several hours on January 1.

The price of this virtual Fukubukuro was 2011 yen each. Then …



2011×2011=4,044,121 yen!! (about 48,000 USD)



It's almost the same as the profit of real Fukubukuro.



In addition, 18 kinds of Oshogatsu(Japanese New Year) virtual goods were very popular, too.




These Oshogatsu virtual goods were sold about 480,000 during January 3, 2011 from December 31, 2010.

The most popular item of them was "Kadomatsu".




Kadomatsu" is a traditional Japanese decoration of the New Year. It's
made from bamboo, pine, straw and plum. Any home decorated the entrance
with it in old days.

Virtual Kadomatsu was 200 yen, and they were sold about 16,000!



200×16,000=3,200,000 yen!! (about 3,8000 USD)



These Oshogatsu items are becoming outdated in the real world. However, they are still popular in the virtual world.




According to CyberAgent, about 2.4M users logged in to Ameba Pigg for a
period of January 3 from December 31. This number is almost equal to
real world's "Hatsumode(first Shinto shrine visit of the New Year)".



Current Ameba Pigg have more 5M users. The women are 65% and men are 35%.



  

It's cool works!



Japan's Tsukuba University Computational Intelligence and Multimedia Laboratory shoots a PV with 3D virtual world Second Life.
Akira Yamamoto shoot a this works(He is a movie director at real life).

Akira Yamamoto's website
http://playgroundofsecretbase.blogspot.com/

This PV is used for student invitation and a demonstration of Laboratory.  

It is not already unusual that the job fair is held in virtual world.
But, are there the company holding a serious job fair in the "cute" 2D
virtual world? CyberAgent utilizes their virtual world "AmebaPigg" for job fair.





Now, CyberAgent strengthens overseas development, andpush forward the
employment of the engineer for the development of the Android
application. However, all niversity student may not live in the
metropolitan area(CyberAgent holds a "real" job fair only in Tokyo and
Osaka).



Last
month, they held job fair in AmebaPigg for the university students who
graduate from a university in spring, 2012. Then about 1,000 students
gathered there. 40% logged in among them from country area and the
foreign countries.



This cute avatar is CyberAgent CEO Susumu Fujita(Himself operates it properly!)



Then avatars of five employees appeared and did Q&A session with students.



As for job fair, the examples that used 3D virtual world and a virtual
event system were found till now. Most of them are serious. All the
participants wear suit and avatars are real graphic... But, CyberAgent
and AmebaPigg proved that job fair could hold even cute 2D virtual
world.
  

Are you interested in the virtual world and Japanese anime film? Then, let's check the "Summer Wars". "Summer wars" is a Japanese anime film shown in 2009 summer. As for it, the screening begins in U.S.A. on December 24.





Story...
Kenji is a teenage math prodigy recruited by his secret crush Natsuki for the ultimate summer job – passing himself off as Natsuki’s boyfriend for four days during her grandmother’s 90th birthday celebration. But when Kenji solves a 2,056 digit math riddle sent to his cell phone, he unwittingly breaches the security barricade protecting Oz, a globe-spanning virtual world where millions of people and governments interact through their avatars, handling everything from online shopping and traffic control to national defense and nuclear launch codes. Now a malicious AI program called the Love Machine is hijacking Oz accounts, growing exponentially more powerful and sowing chaos and destruction in its wake...

via GKIDS,tv
See Also:
Summer Wars official North American website

Summer Wars Japanese offisial website

Various elements are included in this movie. 3D Virtual World(like a Second life), Japanese mobile internet, Avatar communication, Nintendo DS, Artificial intelligence, spoofing, Cyber-bullying, scenery of the Japanese country and big family.

This movie mobilized spectators more than one million in Japan and it won in a lot of Awards. In addition, Summer Wars is nominated for this year 's Best Animated Feature Oscar.

If you has iPhone or Android mobile, check this game apps.

http://swkoikoi.indexweb.co.jp/s-wars.ap/ [J]

You can experience the Hanafuda game of "Koi Koi" that appears in the movie.

What's hanafuda? via Wikipedia  

It's big news! Second Life documentary film "LIFE 2.0" is introduced by Japanese TV program "松嶋x町山の未公開映画を観るTV(Matsushima & Machiyama's TV which watches unscreened movies in japan)" on December 3rd & 10th 23:30~!

This TV program introduces excellent movies which is not screened in Japan. Perhaps, this is the first time this movie is introduced by the television program of the ground wave.

There are a lot of people who still say "Second Life is suck!" in Japan. I wish this program to change the such recognition.