KlabGames Industry Panel at Anime Expo 2018

On July 5th at Anime Expo 2018, Sarah, Alex, and Mark of KLab Games Station fame hosted the first ever KLabGames panel outside of Japan, presenting updates and latest announcements for KLabGames’ hottest global titles: Captain Tsubasa: Dream Team, BLEACH Brave Souls, Utano☆Princesama Shining Live, and Love Live! School Idol Festival.

GamePress presents the complete AX2018 KLabGames Industry Panel, featuring the new news and exclusive announcements straight from KLab!

• The latest player counts of KLab Games.
• The latest on Magatsu  Wahrheit and Lapis Re:LiGHTs, KLab's upcoming original multi-media projects.
• National kits and 50 Dreamballs for Captain Tsubasa: Dream Team anniversary.
• Love Live Summer Fest, an exclusive global event for Love Live! School Idol Festival.
• Free Trip to Japan Contest for Utano☆Princesama Shining Live to Utano Princesama SETSUGETSUKA Eternal Moment event in Ikebukuro, Japan.
• BLEACH Brave Souls Third Anniversary Choose a Six Star Summon and a Kubo-sensei sneak peak.

Jump ahead with the panel links above or follow the entire panel transcript, right after the jump!

Thank you so much for joining us. This is the killer Anime Expo 2018 industry panel. My name is Mark.

I'm Sarah.

I’m Alex.

Thank you for being here. This is amazing. It’s midnight on a Thursday and you chose to hang out with us! You’re going to have a good time, except these slides are kind of boring, so… I'm going to get right into this to not to waste your time ladies and gentlemen.

Look at this, KLabGames. 

I don't know if you know what is what is? 

That is an excellent question.

We were founded in 2009. It started out with Koishite Caba-Jo GP, which never made it to the west by the way back in the day and not gonna be up on the slide  (no worldwide version of, just tuck that away in your brain for trivia). We are an entertainment label, delivering content, worldwide

(ignore that).

Three pillars, three pillars. This is all the rage right now. I thought this is gonna be more industry or something corporate for you all. Just talk to Mark if you have some Japanese IP.

What we do best at KLab, our bread and butter, is we take amazing Japanese content - anime, manga, we love it all - and we make great games. That is what we have found we are the best at. We have incredible incredible talented number of teams inside the company. Globally, we have Love Live! School Idol Festival, Bleach Brave Souls, Captain Tsubasa… They’re all Japanese IPs, right?  

Delivering great content worldwide. All of our games that we make at the core, we want them to appeal to a worldwide audience. Love Live was not just made for a Japanese audience, it was made for everyone. We're one same with all of our other games.

I know you guys everyone has one favorite, or two, or three, or even four. I love them all! It's hard to choose - their own my children - but yes global growth and that's also part of what we're doing here today.

This is our first time having a booth at Anime Expo. We've done banners in the past, but they’re just ads and that’s kind of boring compared to actually coming out here and meeting you all. It has been a blast. Thank you guys!

Picked up some free stuff from Alex. Who got some free stuff? Let me see a hand. Oh yeah, there's more. Come back tomorrow.

And then lastly original creations. This is something that we're working on. Now I won't go too much into this but I just thought that you guys should know. KLab is also working on creating hit franchises with original IP. We will talk about that a little bit. We've got some exciting stuff in the pipeline.

Here we go look at that. Japanese IPs is color-coded for your enjoyment.

KLabGames has a history of success with games based on Japanese anime and manga series.

Our games have longevity. I mean, sometimes games come out and they're like a flash in the pan. We've had our share of those, but we feel like we have finally got a handle on how to make a great mobile game.

Many of you here today have been playing Love Live for multiple years global worldwide. If you are in America, worldwide has been just had its fourth anniversary, fifth anniversary in Japan. That's huge for a mobile game. So many mobile games average six months to a year, because the sea of so many options out there. Having a game like Love Live last five years is incredible. For us. It's important for the teams working on it. It means a lot.

And then there’s Bleach Brave Souls. It's going on its third year. third anniversary coming up the 23rd of July. We'll be talking more about that later. There's a lot of exciting stuff going on there. Yeah. And here we got just a quick quick overview of our games.

How many of you Love Lives! School Idol Festival fans out there? I like that Love Live! Love. You’re among over 40 million out there. Thank you for playing this game. Yeah, so we just have a fourth anniversary. There's a lot of good stuff going on there.

Next, Bleach Brave Souls, how many brave souls fans out there? Oh, yeah, I agree. I like that enthusiasm. We got 32 million downloads worldwide. Thousand Year Blood Wars characters have been making the game be a lot of fun recently. Hopefully that trend will continue.

Any Captain Tsubasa out there? Oh yes, the few, the proud. Dream Team, it is a dream team. I understand that the United States is not the hottest market for this particular game right now, but please know that you are not alone. They love it in France, Italy, Spain... The Middle East loved it so much that we added Arabic in our game for the first time ever. That was just last month, if you want to play soccer game in Arabic, please do. Get better Arabic today!

We had a Brazilian Portuguese for all our South American friends out there. For the people in Portugal, I'm sorry that we did not just do regular Portuguese as well, but we had to choose. Then a Mainland China version is coming in 2018 is the plan, for all of you residing in Mainland China.

Utano Princesama Shining Live, this is the latest addition to the KlabGames’ stable of titles. This is for you girls, you love this. 4 million downloads worldwide. This is also been super hot. Huge, huge number of fans have stopped by the booth already. Global Mainland China versions released on January 24! Welcome to the family and then global growth.

We’re feeling the love, we've actually have the executive producer here and he actually takes pictures and selfies with people today, so if you want a selfie with him come by and talk to us. He’s having himself a good time. Thank you for showing the love, very cool. 

(Editor's Note: GamePress missed out on the selfies opportunity 😢)

This is what we do, delivering top tier quality content worldwide. Love Live, worldwide; Bleach, worldwide (excludes Asia and Southeast Asia); Captain Tsubasa Dream Team, worldwide (exclusive Mainland China and Korea, but China you're coming soon); Shining Live released worldwide (except China, they have their own version).

KLab Game Station, this is what we do every week. How many of you guys have ever seen an episode, just even five seconds of it? I appreciate that. Recently we made it pop up on people's Twitter feeds as well, because we just can't get enough of it out there. We wish that you would watch us more.

We do our best to bring you new news every week. It is a struggle, underscoring our best. It is hard sometimes, but thank you for bearing with us. We have a lot of fun doing the show. Matt he could not be here, because we're doing Anime Expo and Japan Expo at the same time.

Look at these numbers, they went crazy. Captain Tsubasa, you've got Hong Kong, just blowing up the spot, and Middle East North Africa region right now, also Europe very hot. Then also a nice nice showing in Thailand and Asia as well. Then bleach is our most popular game in the United States, so thank you. A nice showing in France and Canada as well North America and then Bahrain and Qatar. Love Live just absolutely worldwide - Thailand, Indonesia, Europe, Asia, the UK as well. In the United States there's also a lot of love as well. That's just a smattering of what's going on.