Bandai Namco Entertainment, the Japanese game publisher known for titles like Elden Ring, the Dark Souls trilogy and Pac-Man, has invested in Pune-based developer SuperGaming. The company has leveraged its Bandai Namco Entertainment 021 Fund, a fund designed to invest in startups and build its “IP metaverse” by investing in the Indian studio and US-based Deepmotion. The fund launched in April last year in anticipation of Web3 and amid other developments in the Metaverse. The press release does not mention the deal size, but the fund’s investment size ranges from 10 million yen (about 62 lakh) to 500 million yen (about 31 million rupees).
“Working on PAC-MAN was a wish list item that I was fortunate to tick off,” said Roby John, SuperGaming co-founder and CEO, in a prepared statement. “For a customer to become an investor is the greatest endorsement we could ever ask for at SuperGaming. So it’s a great honor to have Bandai Namco invest in us and join us on our journey to create games that people have been playing for years.” While SuperGaming is known for its mobile games portfolio, which includes the social deduction title Silly Royale and the multiplayer -FPS MaskGun, they also have a cloud-based game development engine called superplatform. The technique was announced last year in partnership with Google Cloud, allowing game developers to leverage the SaaS (Software as a Service) engine to build games from the ground up – assets and all – in addition to managing analytics, tracking player data, monetization and Integration with games based on Unity, Unreal Engine, PlayCanvas and Cocos Creator.
“Through this investment, we will seek to grow our business by combining our expertise in IPs with a deeper understanding of the Asian market, which is expected to continue growing in the future.” opinion by Bandai Namco Entertainment (BNE). As mentioned, the Japanese gaming giant has also invested in deep movement, known for solutions aimed at bringing digital characters to life through AI-powered real-time motion capture and body tracking. BNE intends to use this technology to create new “entertainment experiences”.
Meanwhile, SuperGaming is hard at work on Indus, its upcoming Indo-futuristic battle royale title set on a floating island. In it you play as Mythwalker, a hitman working for the COVEN trying to hunt down the rare mineral cosmium, which can alter space and time. As with other titles in the genre, players are thrown onto the map to scavenge for supplies, survive and kill anyone who gets in their way to emerge victorious. However, at a certain interval during the game, the Kosmium will appear at a random spot, granting direct victory to the possessor after claiming it. The studio previously added Olympic pistol shooter Heena Sidhu as a playable character in Indus, for which pre-registrations are now live on the Google play store.
