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Gumi Inc., the publisher behind mobile titles such as Brave Frontier, are expanding into the West.
As part of their plans, they’re opening up shop in the US, including a new headquarters in Austin which is planned for first-party creative development. There will also be one in Vancouver. Former General Manager of Microsoft Game Studios AJ Redmer (below) will be heading up the two studios.
Redmer was a founding member of the Xbox 360 team and worked on high level strategy, hardware design, developer relations, content strategy, marketing, design and manufacturing plans. He was most recently CEO at WeMade Entertainment USA. The Vancouver studio, Gumi noted, is staffed by former Capcom veterans who’ve worked on the Dead Rising and Devil May Cry franchises.
Hironao Kunimitsu, CEO of Gumi, said in a statement, “In our experience of achieving global success with Brave Frontier, we recognized that Western markets, such as the U.S, Canada, and Europe, have unique tastes to their local cultures and playing styles.”
“As we have already done with our studios in Asia, we’ve set out to build studios in key regions with the best talent and domain expertise to produce original content that is relevant to local markets in the West.”
In addition, the company also announced it is expanding its relationship with Sega and will publish more of Sega’s Japanese titles globally. The first title they mention is Chain Chronicles, which is a 3D tower-defense-style game.
Gumi also said there are some 30 games in the pipeline of development. That’s… a lot of games. The company did recently raise some $50 million in funding from venture capitalist group World Innovation Lab, though.
