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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 ShotenGenyoshi Kadokawa established Kadokawa Shoten on the 10th of November 1945 in Tokyo. The company began its publishing journey with a specific imprint called…
  • 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 opened its doors on the 1st of December 2016 as a division of Annapurna Pictures. The company aimed to publish games that were…
  • 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 StudiosIn March 2000, Microsoft transitioned its internal Games Group into a wholly separate division named Microsoft Games. This move coincided with the public…
  • 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…
  • 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 began as CQ Hudson, an amateur radio shop in Toyohira-ku, Sapporo, Japan. The business opened on the 18th of May 1973, founded by brothers Yuji…
  • 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…