And now, with two arcade games and a 3DS title on the horizon, Konami has begun a surprising new marketing campaign. Not only is it an odd cross-promotional campaign with Halls cough drops, but even more strangely, the ads are being run in Shinjuku Station, the busiest train station in the world. While similar ads are often found in otaku-Mecca Akihabara, many of the nearly 3.4 million people who travel through Shinjuku Station are now being exposed to LovePlus for the first time. If nothing else it is a bold step for both Konami and LovePlus.

Recently, the female oriented Japanese blog, Youpouch.com, asked its readers to fill-in the blank in the following sentence: ?I can?t stand men who are the kind of people that _____.? While answers ranged from ?patronize sex clubs? to ?play with dolls,? most women responded that they don?t think it is good when a man does nothing but play videogames. Of those, most said that they wouldn?t date a man who always played videogames on his days off, even if he was physically attractive.

By being not interested in normal cultural things (i.e. music and movies), many felt conversations with a gamer would be difficult and thus, it would be impossible to carry on a long term relationship with them. In planning for the future, women also expressed concern that gaming would adversely affect child rearing. It seems that even among net-savvy Japanese women, gaming still carries a strong negative stigma.