Deliverance of “the Greatest Leisure” to Customers

Fields is always seeking out means of delivering the greatest leisure to its customers, an unending quest that has involved countless challenges. One of our major triumphs has been the Evangelion pachinko machine.
  In 2004, Fields unveiled its first Evangelion pachinko machine based on the Neon Genesis Evangelion TV anime series originally aired in Japan in 1995. In the period of more than a decade that followed, each new incarnation of this machine has proven immensely popular, making this series of machines a cornerstone of our lineup. The combined sales of Evangelion pachinko and pachislot machines has exceeded 2 million units to date, and created a market with a scale of roughly ¥700 billion.
  Playing pachinko is a popular form of leisure in and of itself, and its fans are numerous. However, the Evangelion pachinko machine has proven that this experience becomes even more enjoyable when the unique world of Evangelion is brought into the equation. One of the more notable game functions included in these machines is the “berserk mode.” Some pachinko machines feature a “sudden probability variation*” function, which serves as a big jackpot without won pachinko balls. As this function acts as a big jackpot that does not let the player win balls, it was, needless to say, not particularly popular, and few machines announced at the time contained this function. However, when this was merged with elements of the Evangelion anime, namely the berserk state of the central robot of the series, this previously unpopular function was reborn into a new game function that offers players a fresh new sense of excitement and anticipation. In this manner, the addition of the characters and world of Evangelion gave birth to a new form of entertainment value that transcends the traditional win or lose nature of pachinko.
This experience made us realize something incredibly important: introducing IP into existing forms of recreation and leisure can create added joy, and thereby represent a viable business model.

* After a big jackpot, pachinko machines will enter into a stance of probability variation during which the probability of subsequent big jackpots will change (subsequent jackpots will be made more likely). Generally, these probability variation states occur after the won balls are dispensed from a big jackpot. Conversely, sudden probability variation refers to probability variation states that occur without warning, rather than after the dispensing of won balls from a big jackpot.

Strategic Creation and Cultivation of IP

In Japan, the younger generation has recently been thought to be drifting away from television. It was in 1953 when television broadcasts first began in Japan, and in the years that followed it was common for children to spend each week waiting in anticipation for the next episodes of their favorite weekly TV anime and hero shows. However, this is no longer the case, as over the 20 years since 1995—the so-called inaugural year of the Internet in Japan—the very nature of media has undergone a substantial transformation. The first phase of this was the spread of the Internet, after which we witnessed the development of the telecommunications infrastructure supporting the Internet and then the advent of mobile phone ubiquity. Soon, the times gave rise to smartphones and tablets. Today, people are able to enjoy media that is always close at hand, allowing them to consume media content that match their preferences whenever and however much they want. In this current era, a new approach is required to create IP, such as characters and stories, with the potential of becoming social phenomena that entertain countless fans, as it was in the days when television was the leading entertainment venue. This approach entails deploying IP across various entertainment mediums, including comics, television, videos games, toys and others, rather than limiting IP to specific forms of media. It is by creating synergistic relations between an IP’s incarnations in different media forms that we are able to cultivate IP that will eventually become a social phenomenon. In other words, our business should not be one of creating IPs targeting a certain form of media. On the contrary, we believe it is important to first invent an IP, and then deploy it across various media forms through a cross-media rollout.
Based on our experience with the Evangelion pachinko machine, we realized that people were more interested in the joy of becoming engaged in the story and world of an IP than they were in indulging in a specific form of media. It was this realization that led us to place IP at the center of our operations. Increasing the popularity of an IP is not a matter of order, or determining from which media an IP will start. Rather, Fields believes that it is more important to simultaneously extend an IP to various forms of entertainment media.
The leading form of media changes with the times. Accordingly, the spotlight in the entertainment industry has shifted from company to company as the leading form of media has changed from newspapers to radio and then to television, mobile phones, and most recently smartphones. For this reason, Fields is not devoting its efforts to developing IP matched to a specific media form. Instead, we have placed IP at the center of our business, and are focused on cultivating IP by introducing them into various media forms and on constructing systems for facilitating these efforts.