The president of Weekly Famitsuu's parent company Enterbrain, Hirokazu Hamamura gave another outlook at the game industry's future development in Tokyo today. He explained, that in order to cope with the steep increase in development costs, companies will have to consider merger and acquisition (M&A) activities. This would also include possible mergers between Japanese and foreign game companies. The Enterbrain president mentioned that development costs will increase from currently between 300 million ($2.76 million US) and 500 million yen ($4.60 million US) to 800 million ($7.37 million US) - one billion yen ($9.23 million US). Hence it was necessary to aim at a wider audience. He also highlighted the continued bi-polarization within the industry between publishers and development studio. When it came to specific names, Hamamura singled out Nintendo, Konami, Bandai and Square Enix as Japan's leading makers of game software.

• MSN-Mainichi Interactive