An employee patrols among a row of machines at an online claw crane game facility in Kanagawa Prefecture in June 2021. (Mainichi/Ryotaro Igawa)

       TOKYO -- Amusement arcades are also joining the trend of going online amid the coronavirus pandemic. Even Japan's crane game machines -- where players press a button to move a claw and hopefully lift a prize -- are going digital. But what players see on their smartphone screens isn't a virtual world, it's actual physical machines and prizes. A Mainichi Shimbun reporter explored how it works.

       Inside a warehouse in the southern part of Kanagawa Prefecture, surrounded by rice fields, there were rows and rows of claw crane game machines that I was familiar with from video arcades. The crane arms were moving to grab the prizes even though no one was touching the machines.

       This is a facility run by game related company Taito Corp. based in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, to operate online claw crane games. It covers an area of about 1,300 square meters, and the number of machines is "undisclosed," but from the looks of it, I'm pretty sure there are more than a few hundred.

       This is how it works. When the user starts the app downloaded to their smartphone, the actual claw crane machine placed at the base is displayed on the screen. By touching the up, down, left, and right buttons on the screen, the position of the actual crane arm moves accordingly. Once the user touches the button at the target location, the arm will try to grab the prize. Each machine is equipped with several cameras that allow users to change the perspective displayed on their phones.

       Players can move the crane arm as many times as they want within a certain period of time, and they can have their winnings delivered free of charge within Japan. The fee for playing starts at 150 yen per session and is paid with points purchased in advance. According to the company, prizes related to the popular manga and anime series "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba" were especially popular in 2020.

       This claw crane hub is running 24 hours a day to accommodate online use. After playing the game a certain number of times, a button will appear on the screen of the player's phone, and when the user touches it, an employee will move the item to make it easier to lift.

       Online crane games first appeared around 2010, and there are currently about 20 companies offering the service. Many of them are operators of video arcades.

       According to "The White Paper on Police," the number of licensed amusement arcades has been decreasing year by year from 26,573 in 1986 to 3,931 in 2020. Behind this trend is the spread of home video game consoles and smartphone app games, plus the fact that the coronavirus pandemic has made people avoid crowded places.

       Taito, known for its mega hit shooting game "Space Invaders" released in 1978 and whose main business is the operation of video arcades, entered the online claw crane market in 2017. The number of registered users of the application, which was about 1 million in February 2020 before the pandemic, had increased to about 1.7 million in May 2021.

       The smartphone version offers a wide variety of prizes because there are many machines to choose from. In addition to the standard stuffed animals, there are also household goods such as hot sandwich makers, which are said to be one of the reasons why the popularity of the game has spread to homemakers who have little or no experience with game arcades.

       "We are eyeing online games as the new backbone of the company," said Katsuhiko Iwaki, president of Taito. "Among them, crane games will be our flagship."

       Some of the businesses that have entered the online claw crane market have set the price at several thousand yen per play, while offering prizes that are normally sold for tens of thousands of yen (several hundred dollars), such as popular home video game consoles.

       This high price trend has accelerated since 2016, when the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry indicated that the Act on Control and Improvement of Amusement Business, etc., which applies to game arcades, does not apply to online claw crane games. The National Police Agency regulates the price of prizes to be "800 yen or less," but this does not apply to the smartphone version.

       As a result, there is concern in the industry about the increase in trouble caused by the high price of prizes. There have been times when there were suspicions that some operators were making it difficult to lift prizes.

       In response to this, the three major companies, including Taito, established the Japan Online Crane Game Industrialist Association (JOCA) in March 2021 to protect consumers, and about 60 companies are currently members of the association.

       The JOCA plans to establish a guideline to set the prize price at 800 yen or less, which is the same as that of arcades, in order to reduce fraud and excessive services. The association has also opened its website (https://www.joca-jp.org/） as a contact point for consumers to consult.

       "We want to develop online claw cranes in a healthy manner," said Tokuya Fujiwara, president of Aeon Fantasy Co. and representative director of JOCA.

       (Japanese original by Ryotaro Ikawa, Business News Department)

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