Anime Expo Interview with Bushiroad International CEO Daisuke Hattori and Bushiroad Head of International Business Development Atsuo Nakayama

I'm Atsuo Nakayama, the head of the International Business Development for Bushiroad. My responsibility is on IP content development, especially mobile game, and also on internationalizing all Bushiroad content including Card games and Sports content. I appreciate for this opportunity.

There is a total of 8 group companies under Bushiroad. Bushiroad International, based in Singapore, is the headquarter for global business. We have Bushiroad USA which falls under International, and is in charge for mainly running trading card game tournaments and exhibitions such as this Anime Expo. The other companies are based in Japan, each focused on creation of IP and content such as TCG (trading card games), mobile games, music, merchandise and event pro-wrestling.

Bushiroad International, originated by TCG business, is now starting to gain a new function: mobile game. At the moment, the original game creation happens in Japan. Bushiroad International then localizes those games and delivers it throughout the world.

Weiss Schwarz is quite difficult as it involves many rights companies. We’ve just released a mobile runner game from Case Closed last month, and we will continue to work on more mobile games!

Good question. It's our policy to cross promote. While our main focus is in creating our own IPs, it is very difficult for anything new to become a hit. By collaborating with an already existing IP, we get the additional exposure in growing our new IPs.

One of the things we do differently is that we don't stick to being a publisher ourselves. So if you take a look at the example of Love Live! School Idol Festival. From game to game, we discuss with the developers of the game on which side should do the publishing.

In Japan's market, BanG Dream! Girls Band Party! is also not published from Bushiroad. It is published by Craft Egg. Flexibility applied for the best of the project is a strength of ours.

Also, the strong leadership of Kidani enables us to move much faster than many of the companies which are bigger than us. A lot of the decisions in other companies take time, you have to confirm with person A, Person B, and it takes a while for decisions to be made. But our company makes decisions really, really fast.

I have one interesting story, of all the listed companies in Japan, there are three thousand something. But today there are only two whose founder has ever relocated to outside of Japan. That is Sourcenext, owner live in San Francisco, and Bushiroad, owner lived in Singapore a few years ago.

He is a serial entrepreneur. He is a founder who knows business outside of Japan as well.

It was unplanned in some sense, because sometimes our decisions are made based on the user's reaction. When we first did this starting with Vanguard, he didn't even know the market potential of Vanguard.

Thousands of users posted on social media and all sorts of the dozens of distributors wanted to bring Vanguard sets to the international market. So that's why we were pushed to come to Singapore.

Having both functions in one hands should be the essence of game business.

To look back on Nintendo or DeNA case, they could maintain their strength not only by their platform function but also by their 1st tier developer function. Without knowing how to make a game, then we cannot get how to promote others.

Yeah.

We have established a certain level of user base with our TCG and mobile games. Thanks to the success of Love Live!, we were confident to bring BanG Dream! and introduce it to the west. What we are thinking now is, how do we put more international idea in it from creation?

Many of the titles we have developed in Japan did not start with the global market in mind. We’re also doing quite well in penetrating throughout Japan because we succeeded to establish the media channel strategy, like TV CMs, all sorts of digital media, concerts and also even exhibition, but we haven't been able to replicate this strategy well in the US.

So in addition to Anime Expo or any other event, we're going to make our own exhibition, called CharaExpo. We started running this event in the US from last year, and we’re going to have our 2nd one this December.

We at first hosted this event in Singapore 2015, 16, and 17. And the attendees size in the last time, we captured 15 thousand users. The size is still unattainable in USA. The difficulty in this country is definitely the geographical distance.

Everywhere in Singapore is accessible as it’s a very small country. In Singapore it will take just one hour from end to end. In US, it's impossible.

But as US is our biggest market globally, we moved over CharaExpo from Singapore to US in 2018. We had 7.5 thousand attendees, and this year are aiming for a minimum of 10,000 attendees.

Diversification is the key to making a big hit. If you look at the current Japanese market, everyone takes the same media strategy. Traditional media, Digital media, same size of budget, same level of distribution.

Even though we have sufficient 10 billion dollar mobile game market, taking different creation and promotion approach one by one can be the only clue to catch their eyeball. Diversification of IP strategy would be, in some sense, our artificially made entry barrier.

That's true. We put more focus on the live experience, rather than traditional media channel strategy. We are aiming to be more visible on those kinds of various occasions.

The challenge should be to know the market size of the genre.

Let’s say, Power Rangers or Pokemon, those big IPs which established their market in USA in the 1980s, 1990s. Traditional media was powerful in those ages.TV broadcasting maintained astronomical level of visibility, but gradually time changed. 

The users are separating and genres becoming are more segregated. Our challenge is how we make certain level of hit in this fragmented market, which in the past one-for-all strategy could have tapped.

We know Japan has sufficient market of Girls Band "idol type" game, but not so in North America. So how can we bring those niches--but in the past, even in Japan, Girls Band market has not existed—to mass penetration. But 20 or 30 years history, unexpectedly, it can grow up to this level.

So can we replicate that success that once happened in Japan into this North America? It's our mission, challenge, trial.

Yes. We did actually give a try new card game of Western based artstyle. It was called, "Dragoborne". This was a challenge we did Unfortunately, we couldn’t help closing it down, but we still continue to explore.  

Media promotion in USA that we have taken for Dragoborne was very grounded approach. We explored and taught users into most states of the North America by ourselves.

We did a tour. In total almost 2 weeks, I drove day by day, visited many card shops and taught 20 to 30 users face to face.

So this is a bottom-up approach which we think is effective and will continue with any potential new releases.

On the other hand, we need to enhance our overall marketing strategy in able to successfully launch new games. So the marketing side is...

This is actually a great opportunity in building relations with media like this. Media like GamePress that has US audiences and knows the market very well.

This is something that we haven't really been able to do well in our business, talking to the media. We hope to expand this function further.

To my impression, card game is quite a matured market. You know Magic the Gathering, Yu Gi Oh, and Pokemon. How old are they?

The oldest card game still takes first and second place after countless challenges…it doesn’t look so healthy. Market should have rotated and continued to regenerate new titles.

Yeah.

There is definitely a potential. The game will have a PvP feature, so this can be utilized. We’re expecting there to be many more casual players compared to the physical TCG Vanguard, where you physically need 2 people with a physical deck to be able to enjoy the game.

The mobile game on the other hand, will be free to play, and accessible anytime, anywhere.

I've also talked to a few people who came to our booth to try the Vanguard ZERO, and they used to play Vanguard, but aren't playing now because they become busy. We’re expecting those players to download and play Vanguard ZERO, but also potentially through that experience, come back to playing the TCG Vanguard.

As we grow the community, we will see if an eSport experience will work for Vanguard ZERO. We run TCG tournaments throughout the world, so we can even run a physical Vanguard ZERO tournament side by side.

Normal match style of Vanguard takes 20 or 30 minutes.

Yes, exactly. This must be a much, much more accessible game. And we also have the function of autoplay. So in the case of autoplay, they can last only three minutes, and it's finished.

As we stated, USA, fragmented and unapproachable market, is the primary market for us to tap. Diversified ways to deliver content is one of the solutions, but we continue to explore the ways possible to reach everyone. Hosting exhibition and sharing live experience is one of the ways. 

We recognize ourselves as IP developer and also IP platformer. In both functions in one hand, we keep trying to bring something new to North America. One last thing, we can expect more to come, as we are going to be IPO in... this month.

Yes, and the gains through this IPO is catered to the investment for more IP development. From 2020 to 2021, you can expect more titles coming out from Bushiroad. So please stay tuned.