Formerly | Actimagine (2003–2011) |
---|---|
Company type | Subsidiary |
Industry | Video games |
Founded | March 2003 (as Actimagine) |
Headquarters | Paris, France |
Key people | Alexandre Delattre (MD and CTO)|Jérôme Larrieu (Chief Science Officer)}} |
Products | |
Revenue | 10,870,600 euro (2020) |
1,381,700 euro (2020) | |
Number of employees | 75 (2023) |
Parent | Nintendo |
Website | www |
Nintendo European Research & Development (NERD) is a French subsidiary for Nintendo, located in Paris, which develops software technologies and middleware for Nintendo platforms. [1] This includes retro console emulators, patented video codecs, and DRM technology.
The organization originated as Mobiclip and Actimagine ( /ˈɑːktɪmədʒiːn/ ) with notable customers including Nintendo, Sony Pictures Digital, and Fisher-Price. Nintendo licensed Mobiclip compression technology for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS video game consoles, used by popular games such as Square Enix's Final Fantasy III and Konami's Contra 4 . Fisher-Price used them for its Pixter Multi-Media educational toy. Sony Pictures Digital and The Carphone Warehouse used Mobiclip software to deliver TV-like full-length movies on MicroSD memory cards for smart phones. Nintendo purchased the company, to create NERD.
Actimagine was established in March 2003 by a team of engineers (Eric Bécourt, Alexandre Delattre, Laurent Hiriart, Jérôme Larrieu, Sylvain Quendez) and a businessman (André Pagnac). [2] Actimagine started out with mobile gaming consoles. The video compression technology offered by Mobiclip was an optimized response to the battery life and video quality requirements of Nintendo video gaming platforms: Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Wii, and Nintendo 3DS.
The Mobiclip codec provides high video quality with low battery consumption and has been selected by major studios, such as Sony Pictures Digital, Paramount, Fox and Gaumont Columbia TriStar Films, and by leading handset manufacturers, such as Nokia or Sony Ericsson, to deliver video on memory cards for mobile phones.[ citation needed ][ promotion? ]
In April 2006, Actimagine raised €3 million in equity financing from US venture capital firm GRP Partners. This first round of institutional fund raising enabled Actimagine to accelerate its business development in the US and Japan. The same year, Adobe acquired Actimagine's Flash rendering engine optimized for mobile devices. [3]
In 2008, Mobiclip launched the first application delivering live TV on the iPhone, a year before Apple. [4] [5]
In October 2011, Mobiclip [6] was bought by Nintendo and is now a subsidiary of the latter. Since then it is now known as "Nintendo European Research & Development" or "NERD".
In 2017, the United States branch was merged with Nintendo Technology Development. [7]
Mobiclip was developed with a completely different algorithm from the one used for other video codecs on the market, based on minimal use of the processor resources, allowing battery life to be increased considerably and the cost of the hardware to be reduced.
Nintendo selected Mobiclip as its main provider of video codec technologies on the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo 3DS. Major software titles used it for in-game cinematics, including:
Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops, publishes and releases both video games and video game consoles.
Mario Bros. is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo as an arcade video game in 1983. It was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo's chief engineer. Italian twin brother plumbers Mario and Luigi exterminate creatures, like turtles (Koopas) and crabs emerging from the sewers by knocking them upside-down and kicking them away. The Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System version is the first game produced by Intelligent Systems. It is part of the Mario franchise, but originally began as a spin-off from the Donkey Kong series.
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island is a 1995 platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It is the sequel follow-up to Super Mario World. The player controls Yoshi, a friendly dinosaur, on a quest to reunite baby Mario with his brother Luigi, who has been kidnapped by Kamek. As a Super Mario series platformer, Yoshi runs and jumps to reach the end of the level while solving puzzles and collecting items with Mario's help. The game has a hand-drawn aesthetic and was the first in the franchise to have Yoshi as its main character, where it introduces his signature flutter jump and egg spawning abilities.
Pikmin is a real-time strategy and puzzle video game series created by Shigeru Miyamoto, and published by Nintendo. The games focus on directing a horde of plant-like creatures called Pikmin to collect items by destroying obstacles, avoiding hazards, and fighting fauna that are hazardous to both the player character and the Pikmin.
Homebrew, when applied to video games, refers to software produced by hobbyists for proprietary video game consoles which are not intended to be user-programmable. The official documentation is often only available to licensed developers, and these systems may use storage formats that make distribution difficult, such as ROM cartridges or encrypted CD-ROMs. Many consoles have hardware restrictions to prevent unauthorized development.
The Virtual Console is a defunct line of downloadable video games for Nintendo's Wii and Wii U home video game consoles and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems.
Shin'en Multimedia is a German independent video game developer. Based in Munich, the company was founded in 1999 by former members of the demoscene group Abyss and is an official third-party developer for Nintendo. They develop games primarily for the Nintendo Switch, some non-Nintendo platforms such as the PlayStation 4, and previously for the Wii U, Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, and Game Boy Color.
WayForward Technologies, Inc. is an American independent video game developer and publisher based in Valencia, California. Founded in March 1990 by technology entrepreneur Voldi Way, WayForward started by developing games for consoles such as the Super NES and Sega Genesis, as well as TV games and PC educational software. In 1997, they relaunched their video games arm, placing the company as a contractor for publishers and working on a variety of licensed assets.
The history of Nintendo is from 1889 to the present, starting as a playing-card company to eventually becoming a multinational consumer electronics conglomerate. It has always remained headquartered in Kyoto, Japan.
Vanpool, Inc. was an independent Japanese video game, music software, computer software and toy developer. Its employees included Taro Kudou and Kazuyuki Kurashima, both of whom worked for the independent game developer Love-de-Lic. The company shut down on May 31, 2023.
The Mysterious Murasame Castle is an action-adventure video game developed by Nintendo and Human Entertainment and published by Nintendo for the Family Computer Disk System. It was released exclusively in Japan on April 14, 1986. The game was one of the early games released for the system, and the second original game after The Legend of Zelda. The game was released outside Japan for the first time on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in Europe and Australia in May 2014 and in North America in August 2014. It was added to the Nintendo Switch Online service on October 31, 2023.
A Mii is a customizable avatar used on several Nintendo video game consoles and mobile apps. The name Mii is a portmanteau of "Wii" and "me", referring to them typically being avatars of the players. Miis were first introduced on the Wii console in 2006 and later appeared on the DS, 3DS, the Wii U, the Switch, and various apps for smart devices such as Miitomo. Miis can be created using different body, facial and clothing features, and can then be used as characters within games on the consoles, either as an avatar of a specific player or in some games portrayed as characters with their own personalities. Miis can be shared and transferred between consoles, either manually or automatically with other users over the internet and local wireless communications.
The Japanese multinational consumer electronics company Nintendo has developed seven home video game consoles and multiple portable consoles for use with external media, as well as dedicated consoles and other hardware for their consoles. As of September 30, 2021, in addition to Nintendo Switch, Nintendo has sold over 863.07 million hardware units.
A video game console emulator is a type of emulator that allows a computing device to emulate a video game console's hardware and play its games on the emulating platform. More often than not, emulators carry additional features that surpass limitations of the original hardware, such as broader controller compatibility, timescale control, easier access to memory modifications, and unlocking of gameplay features. Emulators are also a useful tool in the development process of homebrew demos and the creation of new games for older, discontinued, or rare consoles.
Mario is a Japanese multimedia franchise created by Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto for video game company Nintendo which produces and publishes its installments. Starring the titular Italian plumber Mario, it is primarily a video game franchise, but has extended to other forms of media, including television series, comic books, a 1993 feature film, a 2023 animated film and theme park attractions. The series' first installment was 1983's Mario Bros., although Mario had made his first appearance in 1981's arcade game Donkey Kong, and had already been featured in several games of the Donkey Kong and Game & Watch series. The Mario games have been developed by a wide variety of developers including Nintendo, Hudson Soft, and AlphaDream. Mario games have been released almost exclusively for Nintendo's various video game consoles and handhelds, from the third generation onward.
The Nintendo 3DS is a foldable handheld game console produced by Nintendo. The console was announced in March 2010 and unveiled at E3 2010 as the successor to the Nintendo DS. The system features backward compatibility with Nintendo DS video games. As an eighth-generation console, its primary competitor was Sony's PlayStation Vita.
The Nintendo eShop is a digital distribution service for the Nintendo Switch, and formerly available via the Nintendo Network for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. The Nintendo eShop was first launched in June 2011 on the Nintendo 3DS via a system update that added the functionality to the HOME Menu. It is the successor to both the Wii Shop Channel and DSi Shop. Unlike on the Nintendo 3DS, the eShop was made available on the launch date of the Wii U, although a system update is required in order to access it. It is also a multitasking application, which means it is easily accessible even when a game is already running in the background through the system software, though this feature is exclusive to the Wii U and the Nintendo Switch. The Nintendo eShop features downloadable games, demos, applications, streaming videos, consumer rating feedback, and other information on upcoming game releases.
Majesco Entertainment Company is an American video game publisher and distributor based in Hazlet, New Jersey. The company was founded as Majesco Sales in Edison, New Jersey in 1986, and was a privately held company until acquiring operation-less company ConnectivCorp in a reverse merger takeover, becoming its subsidiary and thus a public company on December 5, 2003. ConnectivCorp later changed its name to Majesco Holdings Inc. on April 13, 2004.
The Nintendo data leak, also known as the Nintendo Gigaleak, is a series of leaks of data from the Japanese video game company Nintendo on the anonymous imageboard website 4chan. The leak started in March 2018, but became most prominent in 2020. Ten main sets of data leaked on 4chan, ranging from game and console source code to internal documentation and development tools. The name "Gigaleak" mainly refers to the second leak on July 24, 2020, which was 3 gigabytes in size. The leaks are believed to have come from companies contracted by Nintendo in the design of these consoles, and/or from individuals previously convicted of intrusion into Nintendo systems. An earlier, much smaller leak had also occurred in 2018 which contained the Nintendo Space World 1997 demos for Pokémon Gold and Silver.
NERD Inc., a former consolidated subsidiary, was excluded from the scope of consolidation from the consolidated fiscal year ended March 31, 2017, since said company was dissolved due to the absorption-type merger with Nintendo Technology Development Inc., the surviving entity.