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Japanese developer Level-5, most famous for its Professor Layton series of games, has announced it is to form a new subsidiary with advertising and PR company Dentsu. This new subsidiary, known as Level-5 Abbey Inc., will be responsible for creating, producing, and distributing Level-5’s content for gaming and anime fans, young and old, throughout the world.
The management team will still be led by CEO and founder of Level-5 Akihiro Hino along with COO Yukari Hayakawa.
Level-5’s official website goes into more detail, a sample of which is below:
Multi-media entertainment company Level-5 abby Inc. creates, produces and distributes highly engaging content for children, adults and game/anime fans worldwide. The company’s mission is to bring its universally-themed popular game and animation content from Japan to fans globally, across all platforms and all devices. Level-5 abby makes a strong commitment to maintaining its position on the frontier where the newest technologies and great entertainment intersect.
Both Level-5 and Dentsu are huge players in their own fields, with Level-5 boasting an impressive 3.2% market share of the gaming market in Japan, making it one of the ten largest video game companies in the country. Dentsu meanwhile is long established in PR and advertising, founded over a hundred years ago, and responsible for producing Japan’s first ever newspaper advertisements and TV commercials.
The pairing of these two business giants will hopefully serve well when it comes to making some of Level-5’s popular Japanese franchises more of an international success, particularly Yo-Kai Watch. The animated series is set to air in the US on October 5 at 5PM ET/PT on Disney XD, with the subsequent 3DS game to launch on November 6.
Considering just how big Yo-Kai Watch is in Japan, coupled with its newly formed PR machine, it’s just possible that we may be in for another Pokémon-esque craze sweeping western markets. Now wouldn’t that be something!
Will you be watching the Yo-Kai Watch premier on October 5? Are you already a fan and just can’t wait for the games release on 3DS? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Siliconera
