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Johnson, Capcom talk about meeting As we reported in the February "News Bulletin," on Jan. 23, AMOA president Craig Johnson revealed the details of a Dec. 16 meeting between himself, AMOA immediate past president Gene Urso, and officials ofCapcom (Japan) and Capcom USA. His comments , made on the last day of the AMOA Council of Affiliated States Meeting, were the first public remarks made by someone in attendance on Dec. 16. As Johnson explained, the meeting took place at Capcom USA 's headquarters in San Jose , Calif. The purpose of the meeting was to clear the air on Capcom's relationship with route operating companies Diversified Coin and Hustle Enterprises. Specifically, the AMOA contingent wanted to: 1) get information on the revenue-sharing agreement between Capcom and the two companies ; 2) investigate charges that distributors in Diversified Coin's and Hustle's route operating territory were deprived product, i.e ., Street Fighter II, Champion Edition ; and 3) investigate charges that Diversified Coin and Hustle received Champion Editions in kit form while the rest of the operating community could only buy the game in dedicated form. In a nutshell, Johnson said he left the meeting feeling better about points 2 and 3. On point 1, however, AMOA is still uncomfortable. Ian Rose, attorney for Capcom USA, said the manufacturer simply was caught off guard by the demand for Champion Edition . Distributors got the product when it became available, albeit later than they wanted. No favoritism was shown toward Diversified Coin or Hustle, he said. What follows are Johnson's remarks and Capcom's response, made by Rose. All are direct quotes ; the quotation marks have been left off for ease of readability. Johnson: Capcom began providing product direct to Diversified Coin and Hustle Enterprises. There were those who felt that distributors were being deprived of product so that it could go to Diversified Coin and Hustle . Also , while the rest of America's operators were buying dedicated Champions , Diversified Coin and Hustle were being allowed to do board or, in some cases , EPROM changes. The flurry went on for about a year. We talked to operators and distributors in California and Texas and finally said, 'Let's find out what's really going on here. Tell us of a case where a distributor was deprived of product. ' What we found was that the California distributor PLAY METER 16 who was right in the heart of where Diversified Coin and Hustle were doing their main competition had more Champions than anyone in the country. We sat down with Capcom and asked them what they were doing in regard to Diversified Coin and Hustle Enterprises. We also said that anything they tell us will in turn be told to operators. To the best of our knowledge, this is the situation: Capcom has entered into agreements with Diversified Coin and Hustle to provide them product direct on a revenuesharing basis. Capcom adamantly claimed to us that they have no ownership in those two routes. But what does ownership mean? If the bank loans me money to the tune of 80 percent of my operation's value, do they own my operation? Technical- Craig Johnson discusses the Capcom/ Diversified Coin/Hustle issue. MARCH 1993 ly, no; realistically , of course they do. Capcom has provided a great deal of product to these routes. They openly told us that they did do chip changes, but that the chip changes aren't on location; they're changedout B-boards. We had a couple of cases where we could prove that Capcom shipped these B-board products to distributors, found out what they did and tried to get them back, but were told it was too late , operators already had them. Capcom told us that the B-board and chip changes within the games didn't work, and that economically it wasn 't any better for them than providing the dedicated piece. I have an incredibly hard time understanding or believing it , but that 's what Capcom said. They further told us that there will not be any more chip changes or board changes in their revenue-sharing programs with Diversified Coin and Hustle . Capcom's relationship with them is a multi-year deal that still has several years to run on it. We asked Capcom if they were going to make this program available to operators in other parts of the country. They said that at this point, the issue is on hold; they're not totally convinced that the procontinued on page 18