Yesterday, the 2nd of September 2015, will forever be remembered as the day that music game hell froze over.
Konami, the japanese company known for its incredibly diverse line of arcade rhythm games and vigorous defense of its legal rights concerning them, is bringing one of their biggest money makers to the PC platform.
We are, of course, talking about an official PC release for Beatmania IIDX.
After more than 20 arcade versions, IIDX INFINITAS will be the first IIDX installment released to home computers. Right now, according to KONAMI, the game is still in early Alpha stage, and most basic functions like timing windows and offset have been reported working sloppily at best. However, it is a clear signal that KONAMI is finally moving on from their arcade-only policy and following SEGA and NAMCO with their continuous home releases of arcade games like Project Diva and Taiko no Tatsujin.
Currently, the available song library appears to mostly consist of IIDX Sirius songs, perhaps a nod at those fans who’ve waited for a home version of the 17th IIDX installment for more than 5 years now. Sadly, people who weren’t there for the first 6 hours of the test run will have to wait until they can try their hands at the alpha version, as currently, the download for the preview has been taken down, and already downloaded copies will no longer work.
As it looks, the game will require at least a 2.5GHz processor alongside 4GB of RAM and 256MB of VRAM. It will also make use of DirectX9 and therefore requires at least Vista or Windows 7 to run smoothly. Concerning possible future payment options, not much is known yet, but KONAMI did host an online poll for a few hours asking whether the game should be free-to-play, pay-per-play or running on a pre-pay model like the CS versions did.
Update #1
Over the last few hours, multiple people in non-asian countries, as well as China, have reported problems accessing the eAmusement Cloud (the service INFINITAS is running on) or even just starting their games. This is most likely a sign that, at least for now, the service is not supposed to be accessible from outside Japan. However, this problem could easily be mitigated by setting the Windows locale and timezone to japanese standards.
More updates as they follow.
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