Today's highlights are:
Kaiying Network invested in Ember Technology, and NetEase's stake increased to 18.68%
Station B takes a stake in Izanagi Games and will focus on the Asian market
Nintendo will host a new face-to-face meeting tomorrow
Bandai to invest $130 million to build "IP Meta universe"
On February 9, Hangzhou Ember Technology underwent industrial and commercial changes, and shareholders added Kaiying Network subsidiary "Shangrao Shengying Network Technology Co., Ltd.", holding 15% of the shares. At the same time as the change, its other shareholder, NetEase (Hangzhou), rose to 18.68% to become the second largest shareholder of Ember Technology.
Ember Technology was founded in 2017, and its founders, Xingyan Gu, and his team, both from 2K China, used Unreal 4 to develop Chinese a sci-fi third-person infiltration game called Evotinction. It began to be concerned because Sony launched the "China Star Plan" to support domestic development teams to do host products, and got investment from NetEase in 2018.
Izanagi Games announced that it has raised 429.8 million yen through a third-party allotment, involving Bilibili subsidiary Hode HK as well as COLOPL, Akatsuki, etc., bringing the total amount of funds it has received so far to 798.6 million yen.
IzanagiGames' notable works include Death Come True, World's End Club, and the upcoming game Officiation Yurukill.
IzanagiGames said the new funds will be used to improve the quality of new projects and pay for the corresponding labor costs. Through a business partnership with Bilibili, IzanagiGames intends to further strengthen its global distribution efforts, focusing more broadly on the Chinese and Asian regional markets, while continuing to expand its development of new original IP.
Nintendo will host a new face-to-face meeting on February 10 at 6:00 Beijing time, which will last about 40 minutes. This face-to-face will introduce the lineup of Switch games launched in the first half of this year
Bandai unveiled its plan to develop its own "IP Metacosm" at the shareholders' meeting, the core goal of which will be the "IP Axis Strategy". The strategy consists of three main objectives – to connect fans through IP, to strengthen the value of IP and to expand its projects around the world, and to increase sales in Overseas Markets in Japan. Part of that is to create an "IP metacosm", with Bandai saying it will invest 15 billion yen (about $130 million).
In the plan, Bandai said it will develop a metaverse for each IP as a new framework to connect fans, providing a virtual place to connect fans and business partners to enjoy a variety of entertainment. Through the IP Metacosm, Bandai will build a community with its fans and among the fans themselves. Through these communities and content, Bandai builds deep, broad, multifaceted long-term connections that Bandai will focus on the quality of these connections and strive to maximize IP value in the medium to long term based on this approach. "Realizing the metacosmonic concept" is one of the main strategies of Bandai Namco in the next three years.
The 15 billion yen investment in the IP metacosm will be used to establish a "data foundation (data universe)" and develop content for the IP metacosmection itself.
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