COLOPL, mobile game giant in Japan, announced that they’ve opened a $50 million fund to invest in VR companies worldwide.
Guest Article By Shun Kubota
Shun is the co-founder and Editor in Chief of Mogura VR, the largest VR publication in Japan, aiming to spread consumer virtual reality and boost the VR industry in Japan. The publication has features news, reviews, interviews focusing on VR and an online store to sell VR products.
The company says that the ‘COLOPL VR Fund‘ is the world’s largest investment fund specifically targeting virtual reality companies. The fund is managed by Colopl Next, the company’s venture arm. The company says the fund will invest in both hardware and software, looking specifically at VR headsets, content developers, creators of development tools, distribution platforms, and input devices.
Colopl is well-known in Japan as a major mobile game company. Although they are newly entering the VR field, Colopl says they’ve “focused attention on the potential of VR and pursued research and development in this field for past two years,” saying further that the company has “several dozen” developers working on VR games within the company.
Some of their work for Oculus Rift includes Kuma’s Festival Marksman and Shironeko VR Project, both based on the company’s previously released mobile titles, with Shironeko Project being one of the most famous mobile games in Japan with nearly 70 million downloads across iOS and Android.
At Tokyo Game Show 2015 in September, Copopl showed a new demo running on the Oculus Rift Crescent Bay prototype named Fly to Kuma, a puzzle game where the player helps a cute pink bear dodge obstacles on its way to a goal.
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Colopl has also established a subsidiary ‘360 channel’ that specializes in 360-degree video and is focusing resources on the VR video field.
