Umehara main game now is Gunslinger Stratos?

According to the reports, it is revealed that Daigo Umehara is spending many hours everyday playing Gunslinger Stratos since it was released to the arcades on July 12.

As you know, Umehara was always at Taito Station Shinjuku Minami-guchi branch playing SSF4AE2012. But now he moved to somewhere else that has 8 cabinets of Gunslinger Stratos. The Shinjuku Minami-guchi branch has only 4 cabinets.

Umehara was seen playing at Taito Station Big Box Takadanobaba (6th floor inside this building) and 2 other places in Ikebukuro.

Fuudo, Mago, Tokido, Nyanshi were also seen playing with Umehara.

Umehara has been appointed as the "official supporter" of Gunslinger Stratos by Square Enix in January. Later in April, Team Umehara (Umehara, Mago, Tokido, Fuudo) was formed for location test. We also expect to see the team compete in next year's official tournaments that have 10 million yen payout.

All the cabinets in the country are linked, so people have a chance to play with famous players using auto-matching even they are in different game centers. It is still unclear whether Umehara is hired to play intensively or not, but the strategy surely draws a lot of people to the game centers.

Umehara used to say in a magazine interview that he considered playing Gunslinger Stratos as a main game (beside the Famitsu interview where he said 2012 is about SF4 and GS). We thought it was just a humor at that time.