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Today, with Nintendo as patron, he is not so certain, calling the 2001 results a "guess" and saying more research was needed. "I think we have to do more studies using more scientific
methods because I don't think these other studies are science," he told the Herald. "Also I think there is no direct evidence that video games affect the brain."
Neither Kawashima nor
Tohoku University, one of Japan's top five unis, would say how much money Nintendo donates to his institute. A Nintendo spokesman says it does not fund academic research and was not involved "in any
co-operative project between industry and the academic world." But Kawashima says: "Nintendo gives us a lot of donations but the amount is not too big [compared with] the university. Japanese
universities receive a huge amount of donations from companies."
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Kawashima had helped supervise the development of software for the Brain Training game but this was "not a case of co-operation", the Nintendo spokesman said.
Kawashima's discoveries about the brain
conform to the "use it or lose it" school. Healthy brain activity occurs when people read Shakespeare aloud, do simple arithmetic or write. The brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex, goes unhealthily
dull during gaming, his research suggests.
Brain Training demands so much interaction from the user that it promotes prefrontal cortex activity, he says. It involves word challenges, calculations, numerical
puzzles, reading aloud and writing on the touch-sensitive Nintendo DS screen. It is credited with introducing older people to gaming and is consistently sold out in Tokyo.
Another Japanese scientist, Professor
Akira Sakamoto, a psychologist from Ochanomizu University, says there is no debate in Japan about industry money but scientists needed to be more aware.
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Sakamoto wrote of links that Japanese research has found between violence and delinquency in The Advances in Applied Developmental Psychology Series. In one Japanese study, participants gave electric shocks to others
after they had watched video games of varying levels of violence and reality. Those who watched the most violent games gave the worst shocks, suggesting a lack of empathy.
For the 2002 launch of the Xbox,
which budgeted $US500 million for marketing. But Sony highlights the commercial risks. It overpromised on its new game console, the PS3, and delayed the product's launch due to technical and other problems. Merrill
Lynch analysts said production costs had soared to $US900 a unit, which Sony could never pass on to customers, who expected to pay less than $US500. So Sony would take an huge loss - and its share price fell.
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After 30 years of profits, anxiety is setting in. There is demand for new and more realistic games, technology is developing at uncontrollable costs, new game development costs more than $US10 million, internet and
mobile phone downloads are eating the market, and licensing fees from sports leagues and Hollywood are increasing.
Customers, now paying $60 and more for games, seek bargains and pirate copies. Some analysts
call it "transformation", but chaos is also fair. In short, margins are being squeezed.
Games companies are seeking new revenue through product placement and in-game advertising. But they must dread
a product warning: "Video games may harm your brain."
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