Shueisha published Weekly Shonen Leap, the most popular weekly manga magazine in Japan. And now the company is getting into gaming on a much larger scale.
Famitsu reports that the cult publishing house has founded Shueisha games
The company’s head of game production is Masami Yamamoto, formerly part of Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan Studio.
Shueisha’s Weekly Jump has published some of Japan’s most well-known manga, including One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Hunter × Hunter, Fist of the North Start, Slam Dunk, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and dragon ball. All of this has been adapted into both anime and video games.
Last year, the famous manga publisher launched the Shueisha Game Creators Camp, a project to support indie game developers. After his BitSummit listing“This project aims to apply this knowledge to guide indie game developers and help them produce innovative games.” There are already a handful of upcoming titles from the endeavor, including she
Shueisha is currently working on several large projects in collaboration with Big Time game companies. These projects will take advantage of Shueisha’s talented manga artists as well as in-house manga editors.
A project is for smart devices. It will feature character designs by a famous Shueisha’s manga artist Weekly jump. The game is being developed by a large company with the goal of initially releasing the game in Japan and Asia but eventually expanding worldwide.
Another project, which Shueisha Games describes as a “multiplayer speed trick action game”, is co-released with a major Japanese game publisher and developed by a major Japanese studio. The game’s platform is still TBA.
Starting a Shueisha video game company is a big deal as it would mean the publisher would be much more involved in the game development process. So far, Shueisha seems to have been more of a licensee. To be honest, it’s a wonder the publisher didn’t have a big gaming arm sooner.