Bandai Namco Entertainment, the Japanese game publisher known for entries such as Elden Ring, Dark Souls trilogy, and Pac-Man, have invested in Pune-based developer SuperGaming. The company has used its ‘Bandai Namco Entertainment 021 Fund,’ a fund meant for investing in startups and building its “IP metaverse,” by investing in the Indian studio and Deepmotion, based in the US. The fund was started in April last year, in anticipation of Web3 and amidst other developments in the metaverse. The press release does not mention the deal size, but the fund’s investment size ranges from ¥10 million (about Rs. 62 lakh) to ¥500 million (about Rs. 31 crore).
“Working on PAC-MAN was a bucket list item which I have been fortunate to tick off,” said Roby John, co-founder and CEO, SuperGaming said in a prepared statement. “A customer becoming an investor is the biggest validation we at SuperGaming could ever ask for, so it’s a tremendous honour to have Bandai Namco invest in us and join us on our journey of making games people play for years.” While SuperGaming is known for its mobile game portfolio, which includes the social deduction title Silly Royale and the multiplayer FPS MaskGun, they also have a cloud-based game development engine called SuperPlatform. The tech was announced last year in collaboration with Google Cloud, allowing game developers to use the engine on a SaaS (Software as a Service) basis to build games from scratch — assets and all — in addition to managing analytics, tracking player data, monetisation, and integrates with games built on Unity, Unreal Engine, PlayCanvas, and Cocos Creator.
“Through this investment, we will seek to expand our business by combining our expertise in IPs with a deeper understanding of the Asian market, which is expected to grow further in the future,” the statement from Bandai Namco Entertainment (BNE) reads. As mentioned before, the Japanese gaming giant has also invested in DeepMotion, which is known for solutions aimed at bringing digital characters to life through AI-powered motion capture and real-time body tracking. BNE intends to create new “entertainment experiences” with this tech.
Meanwhile, SuperGaming is hard at work on Indus, its upcoming indo-futuristic battle-royale title, set on a floating island. In it, you play as a Mythwalker, a hired gun working for the COVEN, looking to hunt the rare mineral Cosmium, which can alter space and time. Like other titles in the genre, players are dropped into the map to scavenge for supplies, survive, and kill anyone who stands in their way to emerge victorious. However, at a certain interval during the game, the Cosmium will spawn at a random point, which upon claiming, grants the holder direct victory. The studio previously added the Olympic pistol shooter Heena Sidhu as a playable character in Indus, pre-registrations for which are now live on the Google Play Store.