Japanese studio Imageepoch - famous for its RPGs - has been in the news a lot recently. On the positive side, the company's latest 3DS title, Stella Glow, has been confirmed for a Western release by publisher Atlus. Less encouraging is the news regarding Imageepoch's president Ryoei Mikage, who went missing back in April. This month, his Twitter account was deleted. All of this occurred amid reports that Imageepoch had laid off staff, its office was up for rent and its telephone number had been disconnected.
Now, the inevitable has been confirmed - Imageepoch has been declared bankrupt.
The company - along with affiliate Smile Online Game - have reported debts of 1.1 billion Yen (roughly $11 million) and 3 million Yen ($30,000) respectively. Imageepoch's debt is spread across 43 different creditors while Smile Online Game's is owed to just 5.
It's been a fairly swift fall from grace for the company, which, back in 2011, made 1.751 billion Yen (roughly $17.5 million) in annual income. That figure dropped to 410 million Yen (approximately $4.1 million) by 2013, and since then the firm has fallen into progressively worse levels of debt. Imageepoch effectively stopped operating as a company back in November 2014, which would explain why services have been disconnected and the office is up for rent.
The Western launch of Stella Glow appears to be unaffected by this sad news, which is about the only positive you can take from this sorry situation. It's unlikely that Western sales of the 3DS RPG would have saved Imageepoch from the chopping block, but it's a shame that the company - and Mikage - won't be able to take much in the way of satisfaction, should it prove to be a hit in this part of the world.
[source nintendoeverything.com]
Comments 25
Sad news indeed. And indicative of Japanese gaming in general.
This is bad.....He's still missing?
@ottospooky
How so? Last I checked, Japanese games are still selling great in Japan.
This whole mess just reeks of Yakuza.
I'll make sure I grab a copy
@ottospooky
All gaming in general, not just japan.
"Western release presumably unaffected"
I guess you meant "the US release".
The game created so much hype, im pretty sure that coders and designers get absorbed by another dev. They seem to be rather talented.
Lets hope the best for these folks.
@Tuulenpoika And I guess YOU meant "the North American release"
The situation is looking increasingly bitter for Mikage - if he (and by extension, his company) was indebted to the wrong people, anything could happen. Still hoping to see him return safely.
@UsernamesAreForC And yet another troll rambling nonsense. Oh Internet...
Dang, well I'm picking this up when it come out. I hope its a hit for the sake of the debt
@nacho_chicken I'm inclined to agree unfortunately. Even though games are selling, sales of console games are down on what they used to be. And this can be attributed to sales of mobile games. And certainly Japanese games are down in the west.
@nacho_chicken Retail game sales in Japan are very poor these days.
Still want this game but won't pay any Atlus tax for it. It best be 40$
US customers are lucky. Canadians will be lucky if it`s only $50. that is the price of all Atlus games in Canada. SMT Devil Survivor 2 is $60 here. It`s turning me off from buying any of their games.
Another one bites the dust...
If the big japanese companies are doing so poorly (Sega, Capcom, Konami) I hate to think of whay will happen to the smaller ones.
Then again their overhead costs are fewer, but still...
Mm, i'll be buying Stella Glow mostly to honor them. Hopefully it's a good game.
It's a pretty sad end for a company that's had some success along the way. Coincidentally, someone recommended I watch the anime version of Sands of Destruction, saying it was a very good adaptation of a great game. It's on Hulu, in case anyone else in NA wants to check it out: http://www.hulu.com/sands-of-destruction
Definitely a unique game developer that will be missed.
Best wishes for the people affected. It sounds pretty terrible.
It looks pretty and definitely right up my alley. Atlus' high launch prices tend to decline quickly. The Persona Q Premium Ed. was $90 when it came out and now it's $50, the same price as the standard one. Also, the first Devil Survivor 3DS remake has gone on sale for $14.99 in the eshop several times so I imagine it will be the same for Devil Survivor 2 in time. SMT4 also went on sale for 14.99 and its launch price was 49.99. If you're patient, you can get good prices on these games.
@ollietaro the one advantage of getting games in Europe years late and digital only is that they're usually at a lower price: £24.99 for SMTIV (around $37 - good for UK) NIS America are publishing a lot of Atlus titles nowadays in EU - they do boxed copies where Atlus don't want to
@Artwark Has he been kidnapped by loansharks perhaps?
@ottospooky
I was referring to this incident in specific. How does this one company that accumulated debt while pulling a profit from games, whose CEO vanished for no good reason, that is very likely loanshark/Yakuza-related, mean that this will be a trend for Japanese games?
If you wanted to say that Japanese game sales are on a decline while mentioning, say, Puzzle & Dragons' or KanColle's sales, I would totally agree with you.
@UsernamesAreForC Try harder, pal.
@UsernamesAreForC And someone who has no idea what weeaboo means...
Damn, that's sad stuff. Even though I haven't been really to hyped for this game, I'm going to buy it to give them a good bye gift.
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