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Japanese mobile game developer Gumi to partner with Fuji TV

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based gaming company Gumi is expected to announced a comprehensive partnership with Fuji Media Holdings today, the stock holding company the Japanese TV network giant. The company plans to launch a joint venture worth 500 million yen (approximately $4.8 million) with Fuji Startup Ventures, the investment arm of the media conglomerate. CNet Japan reports the new venture will be called Fuji & Gumi Games. In addition, the gaming company will announce significant funding from the media company and B Dash Ventures. We are told by sources we trust that it will be worth tens of millions of dollars. Gumi previously established Alim, a joint venture gaming company with Fuji Startup Ventures and B Dash Ventures back in July. Their first gaming title Brave Frontier has done quite well this year. Fuji TV has been seeking new revenue streams beyond its primary business. And as a result, both companies have agreed to an extensive business partnership at this time. Gumi has already started marketing many of its mobile games globally, including titles produced by their subsidiaries in Singapore and Korea. The funds raised at this time will be use to fuel the company’s global expansion….

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based gaming company Gumi is expected to announced a comprehensive partnership with Fuji Media Holdings today, the stock holding company the Japanese TV network giant. The company plans to launch a joint venture worth 500 million yen (approximately $4.8 million) with Fuji Startup Ventures, the investment arm of the media conglomerate. CNet Japan reports the new venture will be called Fuji & Gumi Games.

In addition, the gaming company will announce significant funding from the media company and B Dash Ventures. We are told by sources we trust that it will be worth tens of millions of dollars.

Gumi previously established Alim, a joint venture gaming company with Fuji Startup Ventures and B Dash Ventures back in July. Their first gaming title Brave Frontier has done quite well this year. Fuji TV has been seeking new revenue streams beyond its primary business. And as a result, both companies have agreed to an extensive business partnership at this time.

Gumi has already started marketing many of its mobile games globally, including titles produced by their subsidiaries in Singapore and Korea. The funds raised at this time will be use to fuel the company’s global expansion. We have reached out to Gumi CEO Hironao Kunimitsu and Fuji Startup Ventures’ manager Yoshiro Taneda for more on this development. So please stay tuned.

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Gumi CEO Hironao Kunimitsu

Brave Frontier: Alim’s first mobile game is a strong debut [Video]

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Back in July we reported about a new Japanese mobile gaming studio called Alim, which was jointly established by Fuji Startup Ventures, Gumi Ventures, and B Dash Ventures. Its first mobile game, Brave Frontier, was generally well when it launched, even briefly becoming Japan’s top overall app back on August 8th [1]. Brave Frontier is a sort of card battle RPG, very reminiscent of Puzzle & Dragons in some ways, but without the puzzles. Like most games in this genre you have a party of characters that you can evolve and enhance, and you can also add one friend character to your team each time you venture into battle. Characters correspond to elements/colors, with some more effective against enemies in a rock/paper/scissors fashion (like Puzzle & Dragons and others). I was curious to see that my colleague Junya Mori was into the game, and I had him give me a quick demo of the game (see video below). He points out that the story is not especially great and the loading times can be slow, but that the graphics are really fun at times and gameplay is solid – certainly a great first effort for the folks at Alim. Brave…

brave-frontier

Back in July we reported about a new Japanese mobile gaming studio called Alim, which was jointly established by Fuji Startup Ventures, Gumi Ventures, and B Dash Ventures. Its first mobile game, Brave Frontier, was generally well when it launched, even briefly becoming Japan’s top overall app back on August 8th [1].

Brave Frontier is a sort of card battle RPG, very reminiscent of Puzzle & Dragons in some ways, but without the puzzles. Like most games in this genre you have a party of characters that you can evolve and enhance, and you can also add one friend character to your team each time you venture into battle. Characters correspond to elements/colors, with some more effective against enemies in a rock/paper/scissors fashion (like Puzzle & Dragons and others).

I was curious to see that my colleague Junya Mori was into the game, and I had him give me a quick demo of the game (see video below). He points out that the story is not especially great and the loading times can be slow, but that the graphics are really fun at times and gameplay is solid – certainly a great first effort for the folks at Alim.

Brave Frontier is still only available in Japanese, but I hope that one day they expand language support to cover other markets abroad. These Japanese mobile RPG titles are pretty cool, and I hope western markets warm up to as they gradually move beyond the domestic market.

There’s so much cross-over and cross-pollination in this card battle and RPG genres these days in Japan, and sometimes it makes games a little boring — but on the other hand, it means that developers are standing on each others shoulders and building on what seems to work in the industry. And that’s good to see.


  1. The game launched at the same time that the new studio was announced. Note that it’s only available in the Japanese market.  ↩

3 Japanese VCs team up to establish new mobile gaming studio

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See the original story in Japanese. Fuji Startup Ventures [1], Gumi Ventures [2], and B Dash Ventures have jointly announced (PDF) that they have teamed up to establish a new mobile gaming studio called A-lim. It has not been disclosed how much stake each party will hold in the company. This newly formed company also released its first mobile iOS game today, titled Brave Frontier. It’s available for free over on the App Store if you’d like to try it out. The company’s CEO Eiji Takahashi tells us that they are preparing to release an Android version and an international edition as well. More games will be coming later on. We had an opportunity to hear from Hironao Kunimitsu, the company’s executive director and the CEO at Gumi. He claimed that they company will try to produce games based on top-class IP in partnership with Fuji TV. It will be interesting to see what this new company has in store for mobile gamers! The investment arm of Tokyo’s private TV station Fuji TV. ↩ The investment arm of Japanese gaming giant Gumi. ↩

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See the original story in Japanese.

Fuji Startup Ventures [1], Gumi Ventures [2], and B Dash Ventures have jointly announced (PDF) that they have teamed up to establish a new mobile gaming studio called A-lim. It has not been disclosed how much stake each party will hold in the company.

This newly formed company also released its first mobile iOS game today, titled Brave Frontier. It’s available for free over on the App Store if you’d like to try it out. The company’s CEO Eiji Takahashi tells us that they are preparing to release an Android version and an international edition as well. More games will be coming later on.

We had an opportunity to hear from Hironao Kunimitsu, the company’s executive director and the CEO at Gumi. He claimed that they company will try to produce games based on top-class IP in partnership with Fuji TV.

It will be interesting to see what this new company has in store for mobile gamers!

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  1. The investment arm of Tokyo’s private TV station Fuji TV. 
  2. The investment arm of Japanese gaming giant Gumi.