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 ...
and a wholly owned subsidiary of
Nintendo
is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles.
Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...
based in
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
with offices 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 ...
and
Sapporo
( ain, サッ・ポロ・ペッ, Satporopet, lit=Dry, Great River) is a city in Japan. It is the largest city north of Tokyo and the largest city on Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of the country. It ranks as the fifth most populous city ...
. The majority of the company is made up of former employees of
Hudson Soft
was a Japanese video game company that released numerous games for video game consoles, home computers and mobile phones, mainly from the 1980s to the 2000s. It was headquartered in the Midtown Tower in Tokyo Midtown, Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo ...
. They have also been the developers of the ''
Mario Party
is a party video game series featuring characters from the ''Mario (franchise), Mario'' franchise in which up to four local players or computer-controlled characters (called "CPU (gaming), CPUs") compete in a board game interspersed with mi ...
'' series since ''
Mario Party 9
is a party video game developed by NDcube and published by Nintendo for the Wii. The ninth main installment in the ''Mario Party ''series, it was announced at E3 2011 and released in Europe, North America, and Australia in March 2012, followed by ...
'' onwards.
History
The company was founded on March 1, 2000, as a joint venture between Nintendo and the biggest advertising firm in Japan called
Dentsu
Dentsu Inc. ( ja, 株式会社電通 ''Kabushiki-gaisha Dentsū'' or 電通 ''Dentsū'' for short) is a Japanese international advertising and public relations joint stock company headquartered in Tokyo. Dentsu is currently the largest adverti ...
, hence the "ND" in the name. Nintendo had at the time 78% of the shares of the company, while 13.3% of the shares were owned by Dentsu and the rest of the 8.7% were owned by other shareholders.
In 2010, Nintendo decided to buy out the company's shares from Dentsu and the other shareholders, being then the major shareholder on the company, with its changing from 78% to 96% initially and since 2015, to 97% of the shares.
Since 2010, many employees from
Hudson Soft
was a Japanese video game company that released numerous games for video game consoles, home computers and mobile phones, mainly from the 1980s to the 2000s. It was headquartered in the Midtown Tower in Tokyo Midtown, Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo ...
migrated to a restructured NDcube, which is also head by Hidetoshi Endo, a former president at Hudson Soft that assumed NDcube at the end of the 2000s.
In 2019, the director of ''
Mario Party
is a party video game series featuring characters from the ''Mario (franchise), Mario'' franchise in which up to four local players or computer-controlled characters (called "CPU (gaming), CPUs") compete in a board game interspersed with mi ...
'' series since his Hudson Soft days, Shuichiro Nishiya, became president of the company in the place of Hidetoshi Endo, who was the president of NDcube for almost ten years.
Games
Notes
References
External links
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{{Authority control
Software companies based in Tokyo
Video game companies established in 2000
Japanese companies established in 2000
First-party video game developers
Video game companies of Japan
Nintendo divisions and subsidiaries
Video game development companies
Dentsu