There are surprises more amazing than others, and the information will raise more than one eyebrow. The Shueishathe company that currently owns the Shonen Jump and user rights on the vast majority of popular mangas recently announced the creation of a pole dedicated to video game developmentnamed Shueisha Games.
The world of manga joins that of video games
Shueisha, the famous manga publisher owning the Shonen Jump in which you can currently find the plots of My Hero Academia, One Piece, Boruto made an announcement that was surprising to say the least, with the creation of a game subsidiary simply called Shueisha Games. Wanting to invest in the video game industry, Shueisha created Shueisha Games discreetly on February 16th. In a recent press release, the publishing giant explained its intention to bring new creators into the industry by leveraging its years in the fields of animation and manga to use those connections in the creation of video games. Although the company was just announced, Shueisha Games already has several game titles in development, with at least three set to release in 2022.
Since last year, a company of this new company named Shueisha Game Creators CAMP was tasked with recruiting new talent by bringing together manga artists, novelists, illustrators, visual talents, sound designers and other professionals from the world of animation, video games and manga with the idea of giving a true identity to the games to be released. According to the press release, a significant part of Shueisha’s activity will focus on paving the way for new creators wishing to join the video game industry. An interesting strategy as we know to what extent the domain is a veritable graveyard for new talent in AAA games. A problem related to working conditions and the culture of crunch. It is also a way for the Shueisha to recruit newcomers and start its activity with low salaries. So far it was Bandai Namco who took care of the video game adaptations of Shonen Jump manga. If one would think that Shueisha would want to end this agreement like FIFA did with Electronic Arts, this does not seem to be the case.
Shueisha Games: three games in 2022
The press release also explains that four games are currently in development, three of which will be released in 2022. The fourth will be scheduled for early 2023. The first to be released will be Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimension, planned for this summer. The game is intended to be a tactical action game and whose first images can make you think of Dofus. It’s also the only game whose distribution studio we know, sinceit has already been announced to be playable on Nintendo Switch. On the other hand, nothing is specified on the possibility of an exclusive Nintendo Switch of the title or its congeners, perhaps they will be available on other platforms in the future. The game currently has an official Twitter account to be found right here. Other titles include The Tower of Childrena Rogue-Like format adventure game, ONIa working title for a 3D action game as well as Ukiyo, a Japanese cyberpunk adventure slated for later this year. Japanese Cyberpunk has definitely been on the rise in recent years.
In addition to that, two unnamed titles are also in development at Shueisha Games studios. The first will be a smartphone game with a chara-design “made by a famous Shonen Jump artist” and a story supervised “by a large foreign corporation” unnamed. The second title is currently named “multiplayer speed action game” in collaboration with a large Japanese company and would be “a new kind of multiplayer competition”. The recent announcement of the JRPG: One Piece: Odyssey proved that fans were on the lookout for productions related to their favorite characters. We are waiting to see how this will evolve in the future. You can find all the trailers of the announced games below:
