I meant to post this yesterday

With all the foofoorah going on in San Diego, no one (except for Tom. Thanks Tom!) has made mention of this little announcement from Konami and Tokyopop (who, by the way, have finally updated their site). For those who hate clicking on links, it seems the former will start to develop mobile phone games based on the latter's properties, starting with Becky Cloonan's East Coast Rising.

I think what's interesting about this is the fact that it's the OEL line that's Tokyopop's pushing into the game market and not any of their manga or manwha titles. Which makes sense of course, since most of these Asian creators could have an easier time of it spinning off their works into games by going directly to the companies themselves (Konami is a Japanese firm after all). All TP really has in their little bank are the OEL titles, and, as the flare-up over their creator contracts showed last year, they're going to do everything they can to leverage it into as many money-making ventures as they can. That's not necessarily meant as a criticism, it makes sense that they would go down this road, just an observation (though, in a perfect world, I would like to see all cartoonists own 100% of their work and not just 20 or 60 or whatever).

Of course, Konami isn't going to bet the farm on any of these titles, which is why these games will be coming out on mobile phones and not, say, the Xbox 360. I don't know how you adapt Cloonan's pirate adventure onto a small cell phone screen, but I don't hold high hopes for the venture. Unless they turn into a rhythm-dance game. That would be cool.