is a Japanese

video game developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...

located in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, Japan that has created a number of simulation games for cell phones, PCs and

Nintendo Switch The is a hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. The console itself is a Tablet computer#Gaming tablet, tablet that can either be docking station, docked for use as a home video ...

. Founded in 1996, the company has developed a number of

mobile games A mobile game, or smartphone game, is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone (feature phone or smartphone), tablet, PDA to ...

for the Japanese market and has found great success in porting them to the modern

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

and

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

operating systems. The company was ranked 30th in ''

Pocket Gamer ''Pocket Gamer'' is a video game website that focuses on mobile, portable and handheld games. The site launched in 2005 and is published and owned by UK company Steel Media Ltd. The site covers all major portable and mobile gaming formats, incl ...

''s "top 50 developers of 2012" list.

History

Kairosoft was founded as a dōjin games developer in 1996, and is currently located in the Nishi-Shinjuku district of

with only nine employees. They started out developing

simulation games Simulation video games are a diverse super-category of video games, generally designed to closely simulate real world activities. A simulation game attempts to copy various activities from real life in the form of a game for various purposes such ...

for the

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

platform, the first of which was released in 1996 and simulated a

used bookstore Used bookstores (usually called "second-hand bookshops" in Great Britain) buy and sell used books and out-of-print books. A range of titles is available in used bookstores, including in print and out-of-print books. Book collectors tend to frequent ...

, and another example was the original ''

Game Dev Story ''Game Dev Story'' is a simulation video game developed and published by Kairosoft for Microsoft Windows, iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch. It was released for Windows in April 1997, on iOS and Android on October 9, 2010, for Windows Phone o ...

'' released in 1997, with a sequel released in 2001. In 2001, Kairosoft switched to developing mobile simulation games for the Japanese cell phone market, which was much more developed than America's. The company was incorporated in September 2007, and launched a new website on November 4, 2008. With the release of ''

'' for iOS and Android in 2010, Kairosoft found itself a large hit, which reached the top ten in iPhone app sales in its first week. Kairosoft continued to port over games that it had previously developed for other platforms. ''

'' ranked Kairosoft 30th on its "top 50 developers of 2012" list, calling Kairosoft games a "genre in their own right" but noting that they still were mostly a niche in the market.

Games

English games for WildTangent

Mobile games available in English

Computer games available in English

Untranslated games

Mobile

* ''Departure!! Shipping Freighter'' (Keitai only) * ''Dragging Cat Rebel'' * ''Excitement! Manga Dojo'' (iOS and Keitai only) * ''Friends Entertainment Building'' * ''Game Center Club'' * ''Good Ramen Museum ~National Hen~'' * ''Manga Path'' * ''Million March'' (Keitai only) * ''Munch Munch Kairo-kun'' * ''Outdoor Excavation Company'' (Keitai only) * ''Piko Piko! Game Expo'' (Keitai only) * ''Prestigious Pocket Academy 1'' (Android and Keitai only) * ''Royal Gallery Academy'' (Keitai only) * ''Social Game Dev Dream'' (Android and Keitai only) * ''Start!! Hero Base'' * ''Wai Wai! Game Dealer'' (iOS and Keitai only) * ''Witch Quest''

PC

* ''Bookstore Story'' * ''Game Developing Countries'' * ''Game Developing Countries II DX'' * ''The Narrow Path to Manga'' * ''The Secondhand-book Store'' * ''The Secondhand-book Store 2''

References

External links

*
Kairosoft's original website, with PC game downloads
{{Kairosoft Software companies based in Tokyo Japanese companies established in 1996 Video game companies established in 1996 Video game companies of Japan Video game development companies