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  • Sony Affiliate Trains Staff Using PC Games
  • January 27, 1999 (TOKYO) -- Carrier Development International (CDI) Inc., a Sony group company, will offer a training program for mid-level managers using a computer game.
    It developed the game with Sentius Corp. of the United States.

    The program will be for mid-level staff in charge of management, finance and marketing. The company will start providing the program around March 1999.

    In the beginning, the training will be conducted using individual PCs. Remote training using a network, however, will be made possible later in 1999.

    The game used in the training is "LAUNCH," a business simulation game designed by CDI and sold by Nihon Keizai Shimbun Inc.

    The theme of LAUNCH is managing a company that plans a trip to the moon. The player assumes the role of the president (manager) of the tour-conducting company. In order to continue playing, the player has to make judgments on issues needed for managing a company, such as funding, decision-making/strategy, product development, advertisements, securing human resources and education. The player has to compete with a company run by the computer in terms of profit and market share.

    CDI is already conducting training with LAUNCH for employees who will be newly recruited by Sony Corp. A program combining the game and live lectures on management and accounting was developed for one-day training for those recruited in medium-level positions.

    Kenji Hashimoto, manager of CDI's ED Business Section, said PC games respond immediately to the judgments of the player, giving the player practical lessons.

    CDI has been conducting training programs using a board game. Hidetoshi Miyazaki from ED Business Section said PC games are more suitable to foster decision-making ability and management sense, because they set a time limit for replay. This is why the training with the game was developed and employed.

    CDI plans to add a network playing feature to LAUNCH. It will employ it in training programs in 1999. Sony subsidiaries and branch offices throughout Japan and abroad will be able to use the remote training system simultaneously.

    (BizTech News Dept.)



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    Updated: Tue Jan 26 14:05:43 1999 PDT