Shaman King will have a "soft launch"

This is from 4Kids Conferance Call from Yesterday (in blue). Joe is one of the heads in 4Kids, I can pull up more details later:

Questionaire: "Is Shaman King still on launch? With all 3 of your partners?"

Joe: "What happened there... is interesting.... in Japan Shaman King is very much along the same lines as Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! as terms a a Card game, Video game and certainly as a Toy line. We were concerned, as so was our partners, that if we launched Shaman King right into the strength of Yu-Gi-Oh! that we might diminish the kids to get caught into it, cause it's got some, similar play pattern as Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

Questionaire: "So we delayed Shaman King Launch because Yu-Gi-Oh! has appeared to become as it has been doing so well?"

Joe: "So we didn't want to kill ourselves coming out of the box. But everybody is online for a soft launch this year. In other words for a minimal amount of these being shipped in the 4th quarter, then really banging away in starting in the 1st quarter in 2005."

Questionaire: "So it's not an August launch. Now, it's--

Joe: "No, actually, actually, it's a September-October launch. It was delayed because of the strength of Yu-Gi-Oh!. Since it's the same partners are involved in the same properties, we didn't want to cut short any life cycle that might existed in Yu-Gi-Oh! at the expense of Shaman King. I think the other side, Mattel for instance, we have this thing called a "Duel Disk Launcher" which is a Yu-Gi-Oh! product. It is so strong, it's the 2nd best product the Mattel has launched as a company. And now it was so strong we and introducing a new one, another version, that was thought about a year ago. So it's been a number of things that happened in Yu-Gi-Oh!, that have... have um... you know would have eaten into the plans we have for Shaman King. Which is a good problem, if somebody else was doing Shaman King and they were launching into the Yu-Gi-Oh! season, that might not be so good for them. But the fact that we control both of those we delay Shaman King launch, without hurting the potential of the property.

Questionaire: "Thanks gentlemen."

I typed almost every single word that they said. I didn't take it from any site. Errors were made in order to protect my work, but doesn't damage the information.

The 3 companies I think are:
- Mattel (Toys)
- Konami (Videogames)
- Upperdeck (Cards)

So what does this all mean? From what I understand:

- New Shaman King episodes, are going to be far apart.
- the August release of Shaman King games are going to be hard to find, if not delayed until September.
- Mattel toys are also going to be very, very hard to find.
- Card game won't come out until December.

WHAT! The card game won't come till DECEMBER!!!! and most of the stuff isn't coming till SEPTEMBER! NO! i was hoping that the card game would come out by my birthday, but NO...

Honestly now, anyone of you want a card that say 'Zeke' on it, or 'Trey Racer'???

This logging issue is really anoying -________-

Oh great..... they are delaying the releases of the TCG and videogames....whoopee!

i could just cross it out and write their real names

Well, good info Andy. One of life's lesson: Follow the money trail.

Isn't it the truth? They may have their reasons to delay the launch, but I think their reasons are pretty lame. To delay everything just because of one show is pretty stupid, but that's the business world, not Otaku.

Not worried about the cards, video games...yes.

Not to mention:

I think they were talking about us, but they forgot to mention the ranting...

that's that mean? does that mean, like, say one ep will be on one week, then three weeks later((re-runs)) there'll be anotehr new ep? THAT'S MESSED UP