Curated category
Video game publishers
- SegaSega is a Japanese video game company whose history reads like a map of the entire industry's evolution. It began not with video games at all, but with slot…
- Sony Interactive EntertainmentSony Interactive Entertainment began as a joint venture between Sony and Sony Music Entertainment Japan, founded in Tokyo in 1993 to do something neither…
- TencentTencent is a Chinese multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in Shenzhen, and it sits behind products used by more than a billion people every…
- Koei TecmoKoei Tecmo is one of Japan's most storied video game holding companies, born from a merger that almost did not happen. In August 2008, a rival corporation…
- NintendoNintendo was founded on the 23rd of September 1889, not as a game company, but as a playing card business. Craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi set up shop in…
- Square (video game company)Square, the Japanese video game developer known internationally as SquareSoft, began its life in September 1983 not in a gleaming tech campus but in a former…
- KodanshaKodansha, the largest publisher in Japan, began not as a publishing house but as a spin-off of a public speaking society.
- Kadokawa ShotenKadokawa Shoten no longer exists as its own company. On the 1st of October 2013, it became an internal division of Kadokawa Corporation.
- EnixEnix began not as a video game company but as a tabloid publisher. Yasuhiro Fukushima founded it on the 22nd of September 1975 under the name Eidansha Boshu…
- Square EnixSquare Enix was born from the union of two companies that had long watched each other across Japan's video game landscape.
- Annapurna InteractiveAnnapurna Interactive has published nine games since 2017, and they share almost nothing in common. Its catalog includes What Remains of Edith Finch, Donut…
- SNKSNK began not as a video game company but as Shin Nihon Kikaku, a small Japanese firm founded in 1973 by Eikichi Kawasaki.
- KonamiKonami began life on the 21st of March 1969 as a jukebox rental and repair shop in Toyonaka, Osaka. Three men started it together, two of whom had met while…
- Xbox Game StudiosXbox Game Studios began with Bill Gates being talked out of games. In Microsoft's earliest years, the company published titles like Olympic Decathlon.
- NamcoNamco started with two hand-cranked rocking horses on a department store rooftop in Yokohama. Masaya Nakamura, the son of a shotgun repair business owner…
- CapcomCapcom sits behind some of the most recognizable titles in video game history. Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Monster Hunter, Mega Man, Devil May Cry, and…
- Electronic ArtsElectronic Arts began with a meeting in February 1982, when Trip Hawkins walked into the offices of Sequoia Capital and pitched a company he was calling…
- Blizzard EntertainmentBlizzard Entertainment started life in February 1991 with three UCLA graduates, a borrowed $10,000 from a grandmother, and a business park office near the…
- TaitoTaito began not as a video game company but as a vodka distillery in postwar Tokyo, founded by a Ukrainian refugee with roots in Shanghai.
- ZyngaZynga, the company named after a bulldog, reached ten million daily players in just six weeks after launching FarmVille on Facebook in June 2009.
- Hudson SoftHudson Soft was born not from a love of games, but from a love of trains. On the 18th of May 1973, brothers Yuji and Hiroshi Kudo registered their new…
- FromSoftwareFromSoftware, Inc. began life not in the world of dragons and darkness, but in the far more prosaic territory of business software.
- ASCII CorporationASCII Corporation was a Japanese publishing company based in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and its story begins with an unusual origin: it started not as a publisher, but…