Pokémon is a Japanese media franchise consisting of video games, animated series and films, a trading card game, and other related media. The franchise takes place in a shared universe in which humans co-exist with creatures known as Pokémon, a large variety of species endowed with special powers. The franchise's target audience is children aged 5 to 12, but it is known to attract people of all ages.
Backyard Sports is a video game series released for consoles, computers, and mobile devices created by Humongous Entertainment. The series is best known for starring a diverse cast of fictional children as well as child versions of famous professional sports athletes, such as Albert Pujols, Paul Pierce, Barry Bonds, Tim Duncan, Clint Mathis, Kevin Garnett, Tom Brady, David Ortiz, Joe Thornton, and Andy Macdonald. The Backyard Sports series was previously licensed by the five major professional American sports leagues: Major League Baseball (MLB), Major League Soccer (MLS), the National Football League (NFL), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the National Hockey League (NHL), as well as their affiliated players associations. The series has changed ownership and developers several times since Humongous's 2005 closure; it is currently owned by a dedicated company called Backyard Sports LLC, which bought the series' rights in 2021. Playground Productions is the series' current publisher, having rebooted the series in 2024.
SNK Corporation is a Japanese video gaming and interactive entertainment company. It was founded in 1978 as Shin Nihon Kikaku by Eikichi Kawasaki and began by developing coin-op games. SNK is known for its Neo Geo arcade system on which the company produced many in-house games and now-classic franchises during the 1990s, including Aggressors of Dark Kombat, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, King of the Monsters, Metal Slug, Samurai Shodown, The King of Fighters, The Last Blade, Twinkle Star Sprites, and World Heroes; they continue to develop and publish new titles in some of these franchises on contemporary arcade and home platforms. Since the 2000s, SNK have diversified from their traditional arcade focus into pachislot machines, mobile game development, and recently character licensing.
The video game industry is the tertiary and quaternary sectors of the entertainment industry that specialize in the development, marketing, distribution, monetization, and consumer feedback of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide.
Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (SIE) is an American video game and digital entertainment company that is a major subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. It primarily operates the PlayStation brand of video game consoles and products. It is also the world's largest company in the video game industry based on its equity investments.
Splatterhouse is a beat 'em up arcade game developed and published by Namco in 1988. It was the first in a series of games released in home console and personal computer formats. This game would later spawn the parody Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti, the sequels Splatterhouse 2, Splatterhouse 3, and the 2010 remake Splatterhouse, with the classic games being added to Namco Museum since 2017.
Kid Paddle is a Belgian gag-a-day comic series created by Michel Ledent (Midam) in 1993. It was first published in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou before branching out into its own volume of comic albums in 1996.
Piranha Games Inc. is a Canadian video game developer based in Burnaby, British Columbia. The company was founded by Russ Bullock, President and Executive Producer, and Bryan Ekman, VP and Creative Director. Piranha Games is one of the oldest game developers in the Greater Vancouver area and was housed in the International Village Mall in the Chinatown area until their relocation to their current Burnaby headquarters. On 25 November 2020, Piranha Games entered into an agreement to be acquired by Enad Global 7.
Monster Hunter is a Japanese media franchise centered on a series of fantasy-themed action role-playing video games that started with the game Monster Hunter for the PlayStation 2, released in 2004. Titles have been released across a variety of platforms, including personal computers, home consoles, portable consoles, and mobile devices. The series is developed and published by Capcom.
The PlayStation Vita is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 17, 2011, then in other international territories on February 22, 2012, and was produced until discontinuation on March 1, 2019. The console is the successor to the PlayStation Portable (PSP), and a part of the PlayStation brand of gaming devices; as part of the eighth generation of video game consoles, it primarily competed with the Nintendo 3DS.
Numerous video games were released in 2013. Many awards went to games such as Madden NFL 25, NBA 2K14, WWE 2K14, NBA Live 14, BioShock Infinite, Grand Theft Auto V, The Last of Us and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. New video game consoles released in 2013 include the PlayStation 4 from Sony Computer Entertainment and the Xbox One from Microsoft.
My Singing Monsters is a Canadian 2012 video game franchise developed by Big Blue Bubble. The first game of the series was published and released with help by Canada Media Fund (CMF) on September 4, 2012, for Apple iOS. Ports of the game for other operating systems were later released, including versions for Android, Amazon Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Steam. The game was also released on the PlayStation Vita portable console. Since its release, My Singing Monsters has grown into a multimedia franchise, with a prequel, several spin-off games, books, live events and series, and a board game. On May 12, 2021, Big Blue Bubble announced that the series would be releasing its first console title, My Singing Monsters: Playground, on November 9, 2021.
Rod Fergusson is a Canadian video game producer, best known for overseeing the development of the Gears of War franchise, originally at Epic Games and then as head of The Coalition. More recently, Fergusson moved over to Blizzard Entertainment to oversee development on the Diablo series.
The Nintendo Switch is a video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. Released in the middle of the eighth generation of home consoles, the Switch succeeded the Wii U and competed with Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4; it also competes with the ninth generation consoles, Microsoft's Xbox Series X/S and Sony's PlayStation 5.
Clicker Heroes is an idle game that was developed by American independent studio Playsaurus. It was originally released for browsers in 2014, for mobile devices in 2015, and for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles in 2017. The game is a spinoff of Playsaurus's earlier game Cloudstone, from which it uses many graphic elements.
Team6 Game Studios B.V. is a privately owned Dutch video game developer based in Assen, Netherlands.
Nintendo, a Japanese home and handheld video game console manufacturer and game developer, has traditionally focused on games that utilize unique elements of its consoles. However, in the early 2010s, the company saw several successive fiscal quarters where they were running at an operating loss. This financial turmoil prompted a shift in strategy to enter the mobile gaming market with the aid of mobile platform development partner DeNA, using mobile titles as a marketing tool to entice that audience into purchasing Nintendo's dedicated video game hardware.
Enad Global 7 AB is a Swedish video game holding company based in Stockholm. It was founded as Toadman Interactive in 2013 by Robin Flodin and Rasmus Davidsson as a work-for-hire consultancy studio. The company began fully developing games in 2017 and became a public company later that year. Starting in 2018, Toadman Interactive acquired other video game companies, including the developer Antimatter Games, marketing agency Petrol Advertising, and publisher Sold Out. In January 2020, Toadman Interactive reformed as Enad Global 7, organising Petrol Advertising, Sold Out, and the renamed Toadman Studios as its direct subsidiaries. Since then, Enad Global 7 has acquired Big Blue Bubble, Piranha Games, Daybreak Game Company, and Innova. In August 2021, the management was replaced with Daybreak Game Company's Ji Ham as acting chief executive officer (CEO) and Fredrik Rüdén as deputy CEO and chief financial officer, with Floding leaving the company and selling all shareholdings by May 2022. Innova was sold off in September 2022 due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
