"On Tuesday, October 25, Japanese-headquartered publisher and developer Koei (Dynasty Warriors series) held its expansion launch party for its subsidiary in Toronto, Koei Canada. Though Koei's Canadian location was established in 2001 with a focus on CG, the team has now been expanded to function as a next generation development studio, working on its first title, Fatal Inertia, for the Playstation 3 launch.

As such, Gamasutra was there to witness the opening of Koei's expanded offices in the presence of Koei co-founder Kou Shibusawa, and talk to the developers about why a Japanese company was expanding into Canadian territory for next-generation titles, and the company's continuing plans for Western and worldwide expansion.



The entrance to Koei Canada.

Koei's Background

Historical simulations are Koei's most well known and successful titles in the West, including the action series Dynasty Warriors and the strategy series Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but Koei is a company with a diverse portfolio of titles in the Japanese market, including horse racing simulations such as Winning Post and G1 Jockey, and "romance" genre titles such as Angelique aimed at female users. Other Japanese success stories for Koei in the Japanese market include their online strategy title, Nobunga's Ambition Online, with a user base exceeding 120,000, and the recent launch of online RPG Uncharted Waters Online in March 2005, now with a user base of more than 50,000.

A strategy of media diversity produces items such as anime, drama CDs and publications expanding the universe of Koei's games. This diversity also includes creating a foundation to fund research projects, and for developments like this, Koei co-founder Keiko Erikawa received a commendation from the Economic Trade and Industry Minister in 2003 for her contribution to the Japanese economy. Koei calls its overall business technique "Consolidated Entertainment Development", involving creating diverse games in a variety of genres using the company's own systems of real time simulation and 3D graphics technologies. Koei's technologies were used to demonstrate the upcoming PS3's abilities at E3 2005 with a demo of Ni Oh, one of the firm's forthcoming PS3 titles." [more]