A couple years ago Konami put considerable effort into making a Playstation 2 version of beatmania IIDX. Unfortunately, we haven't seen any new games in the series since then. Rumor has it that the sales didn't justify the effort and that the series has been unofficially canceled.

I think I can guess why. The game was a labor of love for the team, and they're all still at Konami, so they're not the problem. The licenses might have been part of the problem. There were more than a few good licensed songs in there. I hate to think that a few songs broke the budget, but maybe they did. Also, this game was a huge change graphically from the previous games in the series. I'm sure a lot of developer hours were spent on both the programming and the art. So it's very reasonable that the game did not pay off. Although there was also the hate mail thing. The programmers added a few new features, and the creative team added a few new songs, but the fans only complained about how the letter grades were ruining the game and that the new songs didn't have any anothers. Do you think they might have taken the criticism personally?

But Konami, that's no reason to kill the series! I WANT MY IIDX 7th STYLE! We're almost up to 10th style in the arcade now, but I'm still waiting for Kakumei and Stoic! Even if you have to cut all the licenses, I still want the game. I'm sure others will agree that DJ Taka, TaQ, and good-cool all rock hard enough to carry the game on their own. And that 6th style template is so good that you're still using it 4 years later. Going from 5th to 6th was a major change, but changing 6th to 7th isn't nearly as much work, is it? The letter grades are the single best thing you've done since 5th style – keep them! And I'm so sorry if I hurt Mr. L.E.D.'s feelings. Please tell him that I think Outer Limits is awesome and that he can keep making songs without anothers for as long as he wants, if that's what he wants to do. As long as he keeps making songs and you keep making games. 

(Footnote: There was a huge gap of two years between IIDX 6th style and IIDX 7th style on the PS2. For a long time beatmania was assumed to be in the same boat as Guitar Freaks and Drummania: alive and well in the arcade, but dead for home versions. The one day Konami offered a poll: if we made IIDX 7th Style, would you buy it? They got 5 or 10 thousand yes votes. But they must've assumed that there was some 'war voting' going on, because then they asked for twice as many preorders as they had yes votes. Due to the IIDX community being awesome, we gave them the preorders, and they gave us the game. It was 9000 Yen and only available online through Konamistyle, but we got it. Then it sold out, twice. Then they decided to ship the game to brick and mortar stores after all. And then, gee whiz, both and 8th and 9th Styles were done and shipped within the next year. And now I'm getting 14th style tomorrow!)

That's the japanese market though, where IIDX thrives. The NA market has and will continue to react nothing like that.

iidx has never been on usa ps2

its called beatmania get it right :V

but really idk good marketing and good graphics can do decently well.

look at atlus. i doubt millions are going to buy their rpgs and special editions yet they still make them for their fans. atlus doesn't care if they dont make tons of profit because theyre making their fans happy so they will constantly buy from them.

Atlus, afaik, isn't listed on the stock market.

If they are, kudos to them and their honorable yet impractical business practices.

Konami is listed on the stock market though, and as such, they're legally obligated to make as much profit as possible in a given quarter for their shareholders.

Niche markets can cry all they want (including segments of the only Bemani franchise to have any kind of success here in DDR) but Konami isn't going to make anything that'll satisfy a group of people that won't, in turn, satisfy their shareholders.

I'd think the main problem here is that peripheral music games are expensive to produce, and beatmania US did not sell well enough to justify its future existence here. While, yes, it would be financially viable to sell limited copies exclusively online, in a sense, they already do this via import sites such as Play-Asia.

Another point I have reinterated before is, well, why do you want another one? It's like asking for another Snake's Revenge.

I was talking about 7th style. No one wants another purple game with 3* hypers and no anothers.

This forum dissapoints me. I knew that no one would get it. But I'm still dissapointed.

beatmaniaUS had anothers. You had to unlock them.

And actually, i've heard that beatmaniaUS sold well for what Konami was expecting, AJmix. Selling well in America and selling well overall is probably two different figures though.

This is most likely due to the bundle being sold with a controller. This also means (as hinted above) that other countries imported beatmaniaUS to get the controller since it's arguably better than the Japanese controller. 

Make it make money :G 

Yeah, I heard that too. So does that mean that the sequel was never made because Konami thought that, with the controller demand satisfied, that they'd be unable to sell a game on it's own? Couldn't they just make a better follow up? Do any controller owners feel abandoned without additional software support? Imagine if RB didn't announce a sequel. Wouldn't that suck a little bit for the people who invested in the hardware?

20 November, Battle Breaks, 321 Stars, Love is Dreaminess, and Toxic all lacked anothers. And some of them even had anothers that they just didn't use! I know, I know, I'm being a smartass again. But seriously though, having your back-of-the-box licenses be 1/4/- and having half of the game (5K) be -/4/- was just dumb. The songlist felt so empty. There were 60 total songs, 147 total singles play charts across all difficulties. Exactly half of the game only had 1 or 2 charts. Meanwhile, Genom Screams had 4 charts. If KOA can hire DDR fans to make DDR charts, can't they hire IIDX fans to make beatmania charts?

Yeah, I heard that too. So does that mean that the sequel was never made because Konami thought that, with the controller demand satisfied, that they'd be unable to sell a game on it's own? Couldn't they just make a better follow up? Do any controller owners feel abandoned without additional software support? Imagine if RB didn't announce a sequel. Wouldn't that suck a little bit for the people who invested in the hardware?

I think a large portion of the sales were from people who wanted an extra controller for Japanese IIDX. I'll admit that I bought a copy, opened it in the store, and returned the game immediately just to keep the controller (I already owned another copy).  Practically everyone I know who purchased that game also plays Japanese IIDX.  With that said I am sure there are some people who bought the US version, don't know about the Japanese one, and would like a sequel, but these people are probably the minority.  (I'm totally guessing here)

I think another US beatmania game would be cool but I personally would want one thing:  make the song list totally different than Japanese IIDX.  I don't want to see a mix that is kind of like a Japanese release because then I feel like I am getting a spin-off of the real version that I would import anyway.  I think it would be fun if there was a complete American mix with some good western music in it.  How cool would it be to play some Justice or Daft Punk on IIDX?  Yeah, I know, the licenses would be expensive but 90% of the people who I have introduced to IIDX have said, "I like it but it needs American music, like American techno" or something to that effect.  Americans who like Bemani music are a minority.

I would want the next US beatmania to be full IIDX, and have enough songs that new players can realistically progress through it.  BMUS didn't have enough songs for players to get better on.  For example, if you could do level 5s and you are trying to progress to 6s then you don't have a lot of content to practice on.  IIDX already has a tough learning curve so for a US mix that will have newcomers to the series there need to be a lot of songs on the middle levels.

I'll cut this post short since I could go on for days about IIDX.  BMUS 2nd mix would be cool if done right, but I have doubts that it would sell well over here.

I think another US beatmania game would be cool but I personally would want one thing:  make the song list totally different than Japanese IIDX.  I don't want to see a mix that is kind of like a Japanese release because then I feel like I am getting a spin-off of the real version that I would import anyway.

I agree completely! Of course, then you'd have to deal with DDR IIDX fans on DDR IIDX forums complaining about how they got screwed. And how the Japanese version has better songs. And how everyone should just import the Japanese versions. Etc. And good choices for licenses. To add to that, I'd say that anything they've licensed for DDR also works in IIDX. Just like how GF and DM have 98% of their songs in common, there isn't much that I would consider to be exclusive to IIDX or DDR. So whatever they've been doing to get licenses for DDR every year, moar of that.

Hopefully, if they fill out the difficulty levels more, and don't waste half of the songlist by giving it just one chart, then the difficulty curve won't be so bad. Gold might have only had 6 charts in the 1-3 range, but levels 4-9 have at least 20 charts each! And they're spread out over 90 songs, so they don't get repetitive, either. Twenty+ charts per level is good and BMUS made beginner a new difficulty level to fill the gaps in the 1-3 range. But Battle Breaks breaks my heart. Someone had the genius to put it in. Battle Breaks! And then they make it a "-/5/-, -/-/-/-" on singles and a "-/5/-, -/-/-" on doubles. And then the game doesn't have enough 1s or 3s or 7s or whatever. (Completely besides the fact that IIDX got 50 songs in a year in which DDR got 70.)

Complaining about Battle Breaks just gave me a horrible idea.

Here's the thing though..

Mainstream songs on IIDX are fine. Surprise Konami. It might not be good for DDR standards but since you're making the beats and not dancing to it, it's actually totally different!

I know. What a shocker.
 

It's probably not worth the money for them to license some of the more mainstream songs; acquiring master tracks of songs is not at all cheap.

I kind of agree with this idea: integrating Beatmania and DDR, at least in the US. Now, if they could advertise the game enough to get people to get it, they might get good returns!

The main problem with Beatmania in the US is that they don't advertise it enough. Most people have at least seen or heard of DDR, but to know about Beatmania you have to know someone that plays it. And they have to actually show it to you and explain it. With this new Rock Revolution thing coming out this year, you'd think they'd try pushing IIDX in the US along with it. I wouldn't even be surprised if they didn't push it because it doesn't have the word "Revolution" in its name. Even then that's a stupid excuse, because they could have just re-named beatmania with Revolution somewhere in the title for the US only or something silly like that. Whatever. I'm perfectly happy supporting Konami by buying the Japanese games. Perhaps websites that sell import games should tell Konami how many people actually import them, maybe that'd show them we're interested. Making a decision that there aren't enough people/arcade owners interested (the case with GOLD US I believe) is not a good idea when only a select few have even heard of the game. It's one of those catch-22 whatsits. We just can't win with Konami US, it would seem.

On the controller thing, theoretically Konami could make another beatmania IIDX controller with like ONE new improvement or feature or something to differentiate it from the old ones. Then people would be interested in buying the controllers, and they could sell them as a bundle again to sell the game too. Beatmania III would be nice, since the US controllers had a port for the foot pedal. Why make it if you're not going to use it? Heck, they could even just sell the foot pedal + game package, and another bundle of the game, controller and foot pedal. They could make profit off of the hardware if not the software as well. Japanese people would probably import it just for Beatmania III! Of course that's just moving backwards with the series, because of the whole 5 key thing. 7 key + foot pedal would be cool though, beatmania IV perhaps? or beatmania IIIDX? hahaha. I'm just brainstorming. It goes to show that Konami had a lot of options, and the one they picked was to do absolutely nothing, leaving us unsatisfied. Blech.

I never heard about Beatmania until about 2006.

I bought the US PS2 bundle, and I found it really difficult to play.

I think there was only 35 songs in it too, which was kind of dissapointing.

What is the incentive for America to play IIDX, a very difficult learning curved game? None.

Guitar Hero? It's a guitar. People rave about the rock genre. That's its only reason it's working here. 

This thread was originally a joke/point about the long gap that Bemani games sometimes go through. But now I guess it's turned into "What beatmania needs to be successful over here?" Cool. I like that.

(Other famous deaths in the Bemani series: DDR AC, GF/DM CS, and the current state of PNM CS.)

DDR and IIDX are related in an abstract way. Both games launched in 1999 and the games were actually sessioned in Substream. I'll ignore Substream since it was never relevant. But both games want to be 50% club music. And the two games have always borrowed heavily from each other. And the release dates of the AC versions line up, too. DDR 3rd + IIDX 3rd. DDR 7th + IIDX 7th. Both D2R and Kakumei were on 7th style first, but only Kakumei is considered a crossover in DDR. And actually, going by the group of songs that each game always has in common, that would make Supernova "DDR 14th mix", SN2 is 15th mix, and DDRX is 16th mix. It makes sense. So Red Zone is a song from DDR 11th mix. The missing AC years of 9th-13th were still made in CS form. Obviously calling any game DDR 14th mix is silly. I'm just saying that DDR and IIDX do have linked content and releases, and that PiRC's suggestion of tapping DDR to promote IIDX shouldn't be much of a stretch.

GH is kind of hard. And DDR is actually extremely hard. If you're a total newbie then your foot-eye coordination is at skill level 0. At least with complicated FPS and RTS games (as an example of a high barrier to entry) you've got your ordinary mouse and keyboard experience. But I've noticed that with video games, if people want to play, they'll either learn to be happy on an easier difficulty level (GH, DDR, Madden), or they'll suffer through losing at the game and still be happy (Gradius, WoW, IIDX). Actually, all 6 of those games have both types of player. WoW is a good example of complexity and difficulty not stopping a game from being a hit. And IIDX is neither complex or in a niche genre.

Yep, I'm still around.

^ Speaks truth.

Seriously, I played Guitar Hero at a party once and I passed a song on Expert (Or whatever the hardest difficulty is) , despite having never played it and having only played GF for about a month.I came close to failing a couple times though.

To this day I still can't beat CaptivAte ~Sabaki~ on basic, hehe.

You had to have already known about IIDX or frequented a DDR site like BMS or DDR Freak that also had a forum for IIDX or some sort of IIDX following to have known about the game (even the reviews in gaming magazines were tiny boxes in a corner that would be looked over by the average gamer). 

Konami should know better than to expect to do well off of a game that they don't advertise. This game was to satisfy everyone who wanted a local release so they could say "hey, we tried" whenever it came up. I felt gipped by this game, I felt ripped off when I played it. Horrible graphics and some pretty horrible song choices with no harder difficulties for a lot of the good songs.

I would love to see Konami try IIDX in America again, but like they need to do with all of their releases, they need to NOT try and Americanize it. A lot of people in America like other-cultural things, and while IIDX might not be popular with a lot of hardcore gamers, if they advertised it right they could score BIG with a lot of Anime fans and hardcore RPG gamers. But they never advertised the console release to ANYONE, and frankly I don't think the small little American arcade audience is going to be too interested in IIDX, and arcades cannot afford it (which is why the attempt at bringing GOLD over failed).

it has nothing to do with advertising, it's about not being cheap and buying the game. period. DDR has thrived on the "word of mouth" tactic and still does to this day and amazingly it still works. it's a user-friendly game with a very simple interface, learning curve and fun factor/high replayability. in IIDX there really is none of that. The learning curve is insanely steep, the replay value comes from wanting high scores for vj army, and the user-interface may take a minute to get used to if you've never seen anything like it before. in short, it's not a US game.

They didn't have any other markets in mind when they created beatmania or any of these other games. Some have actually done well for themselves and some haven't. There just isn't a demand or want for a game like IIDX or Pop'n. GF & DM maybe, but with RB and GHWT it'll be hard to have arcades want to shell out the money for what kids are already playing at home with music they know.

there's a lot of ways to get software, music, movies, or whatever for free instead of just buying it. and if people did buy the game it was for the controller. the game was just bonus.

"it's a user-friendly game with a very simple interface, learning curve and fun factor/high replayability. in IIDX there really is none of that."

That's debatable. :) Arguing this for IIDX and DDR is easy because the two games have so much in common. IIDX versus some other video game... well then I'd have to stop and think for a bit. But IIDX and DDR share quite a bit. Both games want an eclectic club mix and they borrow music from each other all the time. Both games are played by picking songs off a wheel in groups of 3 until you get bored. Both games offer doubles. And that's not what they have common - that's what sets them apart from other music games.

If IIDX has a bad interface, what about DDR? I could be wrong, but I think it was IIDX 3rd style that invented the songwheel. Then 5th Mix added the difficulty selector. Then IIDX 6th borrowed it back and now IIDX, DDR, GF, and DM all look and work the same. In-game, it's always the same array of columns. DDR is backwards because it feels natural that way. But if you can play one game then you can play any of them.

Now for the differences. DDR's controller is harder to use and IIDX's charts are far more dense. Foot-eye coordination is new skill to everyone. But even non-gamers are good with their fingers. People "get" DDR when they stop stumbling around. But people "get" IIDX when they learn how to read the screen. Both skills are needed in both games. And I disagree that one skill is harder to learn than the other. IIDX has a reputation for having a steep learning curve because people have been saying so for years. But I don't buy it. The "high end" content is rediculously hard, but levels 1-4 are pretty tame. The curve from 5.1.1. to Nageki no Ki might be long, but it's not steep.