Nintendo digs deep for smaller companies looking for next Pokemon
Investment funds announced for developers
Nintendo of Japan has announced that it has a substantial fund pool available for smaller developers to create games for Nintendo platforms, the Nihon Keizai newspaper has reported.
Nintendo will make grants available of between 10 million and 20 million yen, roughly £50,000 to £100,000, to ease the production costs of smaller developers. Though this is only about 10% to 20% of the final production costs for an average game in Japan, Nintendo hopes to ease the financial burden of starting up projects and in doing so, engender loyalty to its hardware.
The move comes after Pokemon, a world-beating franchise that is now perhaps on the wane, was initially developed by Game Freak, a Tokyo based start-up company. Nintendo would very much like another license to print money again, and it hopes to find the presses in one of Japan’s smaller and newer game companies.
One undisclosed company has already received funding under the terms of the program and Nintendo is said to have several other titles from various companies under review, with games for both GameCube and Game Boy Advance.
Nintendo will make grants available of between 10 million and 20 million yen, roughly £50,000 to £100,000, to ease the production costs of smaller developers. Though this is only about 10% to 20% of the final production costs for an average game in Japan, Nintendo hopes to ease the financial burden of starting up projects and in doing so, engender loyalty to its hardware.
The move comes after Pokemon, a world-beating franchise that is now perhaps on the wane, was initially developed by Game Freak, a Tokyo based start-up company. Nintendo would very much like another license to print money again, and it hopes to find the presses in one of Japan’s smaller and newer game companies.
One undisclosed company has already received funding under the terms of the program and Nintendo is said to have several other titles from various companies under review, with games for both GameCube and Game Boy Advance.
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