Interview: ACGHK 2014 and Sony Entertainment Hong Kong

YCPTech sits down with Jacqueline Chiu of Sony Computer Entertainment Hong Kong (SCEH) to talk about Animation-Comic-Game Hong Kong 2014 (ACGHK).

Hi! Can you tell us who you are and what you do?

I’m Jacqueline and I’m the Assistant General Manager of Communications for Hong Kong and South East Asia.

 

Can you tell us why Sony has moved away from Asia Game Show? Why pick ACGHK this year?

We are attending ACGHK 2014 because of the different audience they have. This will be one way for Sony to be exposed to a larger variety of consumers. In anticipation of this, we are bringing together a huge amount of high value deals to maximise our appeal. We were absent from last year’s AGS so we expect to do twice as well this year!

Wow count me in! So how do you expect ACGHK to be different when compared to AGS?

We expect the audience to be relatively young. We know for sure that comic fans are highly likely to be interested in gaming so this isn’t something we should miss.

SCEH being a Japanese company and all, we naturally have a lot of fan-favourites such as Hatsune Miku, Gundam, One Pieve, Final Fantasy, Legend of Heroes: Sen No Kiseki and these deeply intertwine with comics and cosplays. It’s a win-win.

 

So does this mean Sony will not be appearing at Asia Game Show anymore?

We don’t have any such plans for this year but you never know. So back to ACGHK. How about you briefly walk us through SCEH’s run down? What can visitors look forward too and what shouldn’t they miss??

So this year is Sony’s debut at ACGHK. We will have 30 games available for visitors. Yer that’s right! And 13 of those are going to be exclusive pre-releases! Tokyo Game Show (held in Japan in September) isn’t the only show where you get early tastes of unreleased games.

We also have a lot of special deals exclusive to exhibition visitors. For example if you buy a fully priced Playstation 4 ($3380) you get the same amount of gifts and accessories in return!

Buy a Vita ($1418) and you’ll receive gifts that are valued more than ($1700) the console itself!

The details are all here: http://goo.gl/JrKMdY

 

This sounds incredible..

That’s not it.

We have invited quite a number of social media influencers, famous Youtubers to host some of the activities.

We’ve also got- wait for it… Daigo Umehara! He’s one of the world’s most famous pro-gramers. And he, will be accepting challenges from anyone anyone brave enough to do so…or desperate enough. Because winner takes home our “Ultimate gift pack”. There will be PS4s, PS3s, Vitas, Mad Catz accessories and lots of other stuff!

for more details:http://goo.gl/JrKMdY

Well, I wouldn’t mind trying my luck.

 

Topping off our list of guests, we have six Japanese game producers attending the event. Survival horror master- Shinji Mikami of the Bio Hazard fame for one. He will be presenting his next masterpiece “The Evil Within”.

In terms of local celebrity we have Venus Wong joining us for some serious gaming. She will be there on the first day only so do NOT miss your chance, Venus fans! But if you do, don’t worry because there will be one celebrity a day!

 

So it looks like SCEH is pulling out all the stops.. What about games? Can you be more specific?

You absolutely do not want to miss “The Order: 1886”, ”The Evil Within”,”Driveclub”! But that’s all I’m saying. You’ll have to see for yourself when you get there!

Looking forward to it. I mean thirty games? I’ll be in heaven.
How about… Project Morpheus? Can you tell us anything about this?

We know this is one of the most highly anticipated peripherals and SCEH is doing its best to bring this over to Hong Kong for our fans’ preview..

What we can say for sure is part of our effort in bringing elusive PlayStation products is paying off. As you can see. a lot of these pre-release games are highly sought after.

I see. What about PlayStation Now? Is this Sony’s answer to the increasing threat that is mobile gaming? Will it make an appearance in ACGHK?

Currently the PS Now program is better suited to the US market. It’s definitely a pioneer project and requires some seriously robust infrastructures to pull off in order to control the user experience. So the only thing that makes sense is a phased roll-out I’m afraid.

Ok, so moving on, Microsoft is also going to be present with their Xbox One. What do you think of that? Is there going to be a competition to see who gets more visitors?

We welcome competition with open arms. No just kidding. Point is, the more high calibre exhibitors at ACGHK, the more exposed we will be. Simple as that.

Good answer. There’s going to be a lot of cosplay. Is this to Sony’s advantage?

As I said earlier, cosplay and Sony go hand in hand. Our games are one of the greatest origins of this phenomenon. And cosplayers and fans of cosplayers are one of our best customers. So yes we love having them around. ACGHK is a place made for them and we just love to see them enjoying themselves.

Ok so final bonus question.. this one’s for the lads I suppose. Does this mean we can expect pseudo-models in skimpy costumes to run rampant?

Well we invite all sorts of performers ourselves. There will be guys as well as girls, celebrities included. There will be models, yes. Professional ones.

We will have cosplayers, and game girls from Taiwan, China and Hong Kong.. We put a lot of effort into this and all we really want is for our fans and visitors to enjoy themselves.

 

I’m sure they will!

Thank you very much for your time Jacqueline. We hope you have a successful show!

 

*All currencies are HKD, Hong Kong Dollars