Japanese game studio Koei Entertainment says it will more than double the size of its operation in Singapore.
The company pledges to hire up to 60 new employees over the next two years at its Singapore subsidiary, to add to the 50 it already has there.
Singapore has identified digital media as being a growth area that could benefit its economy. It has been wooing foreign companies to get them to expand their operations or move there. The government recently announced that a zone branded as Mediapolis@one-north, a cluster of buildings in the city’s Buona Vista district, are being earmarked for media and gaming-related companies.
In 2008, Italian studio Rainbow SpA set up its maiden local subsidiary. Electronic Arts moved its regional headquarters from Hong Kong to Singapore.
Koei Entertainment develops content for mobile platforms including Sony PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS Lite. But in a sign of the increasing role of platform convergence and content convergence in the gaming and entertainment industry, Koei says the Singapore operation will also work on ‘network-related’ titles—a new breed of games that can be played across multiple platforms.
Koei has already used its Singapore lab to produce on online version of its best selling computer game title Romance of the Three Kingdoms (ROTK), based on events in China in the second and third centuries AD.
Koei hopes the localised theme will help sales of ROTK Online in Greater China. The web-based version was released in Japan in February 2008 and Koei has signed deals to distribute the game in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.
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