Anime giant ‘Toei’ announces new subsidiary: Toei Games

Toei is a Japanese animation studio known best for their work on countless iconic franchises, including but not limited to One Piece; Dragon Ball; Digimon and many more. While the company has partnered with various video game developers and publishers over the years, Toei now appears to be taking things into their own hands, announcing that they have established ‘Toei Games’ with the goal to “create a new intellectual property that will captivate the world, starting with games.”

Making the announcement via a press release (translated by the publication Gematsu), Toei Corporation officially unveiled their brand new video games-focused subsidiary Toei Games.

Created in alignment with the company’s 75th anniversary, Toei Games is described as being a “new pillar” for the business alongside its other endeavours.

Speaking on this announcement, Toei CEO Fumio Yoshimura stated: “Games are an extremely global form of entertainment that continues to spread beyond language and national borders. Our group’s medium- to long-term vision, ‘Toei New Wave 2033,’ aims to deliver the ‘stories’ created by Toei to the entire world. We believe that our challenge in the game business, with the global market as our main battleground, is the embodiment of that vision.”

As mentioned, Toei is home to many iconic anime franchises, including Dragon Ball, One Piece; Sailor Moon; Digimon and countless others. That said, the newly-established Toei Games will not make use of any pre-existing IPs, instead wanting to:

“create entirely new IPs from scratch, rather than simply utilizing existing IPs. We will leverage the technology and expertise we have cultivated through video production into our new game business, delivering Toei’s unique entertainment experience to players around the world.”

Given the cache of many of its franchises, it is perhaps for the best that Toei’s internal efforts are limited to new intellectual properties for now – at least until they are more familiar with making games specifically.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see what comes from Toei Games, and whether it will grow into something greater given enough time. The first game under this new studio will be officially announced on the 24th of April as a PC-first title.

KitGuru says: What do you think of Toei’s latest announcement? Would you have liked to see them try to make games based on their current IPs? Let us know down below.

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