LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwire - Apr 19, 2011) - Capcom®, a leading developer and publisher of video games, today announced the creation of "Beeline™," a new publishing brand tasked with expanding the company's presence in the burgeoning "freemium" smartphone space. The creation of "Beeline" marks the first time Capcom has created a separate publishing sub-brand with the intent of targeting a specific sector of the videogame market.
"Capcom recognizes that the market for social smartphone games is very different from our core video game business," said Midori Yuasa, President and COO, Capcom Interactive, Inc. "Capcom is extremely committed to the smartphone social game space, and the creation of 'Beeline' represents a major investment and strategic refocusing of the company's mobile operations."
Capcom realigned its mobile operations to focus on smartphone game development in 2009. Since then, the company's North American and European subsidiaries have achieved impressive success with "freemium" social games targeted at the "casual" gamer. Titles released in this category thus far include Smurfs'® Village, Zombie Cafe™ and Lil' Pirates™. Cumulative downloads of these three titles are currently more than 15 million. At launch, Smurfs' Village became the number one top-grossing app in 55 countries and consistently ranks as a top-ten grossing app worldwide on Apple's App store. All three games regularly maintain a user review rating of 4 ½ stars on the U.S. App Store. With the creation of "Beeline," Capcom's goal is to capitalize on this success with a brand and team focused on the mobile casual gamer.
Beeline will maintain offices in Los Angeles, Toronto, London and Tokyo. The newly formed Tokyo office will focus on creating original smartphone social games for the Japanese market as well as adapting the company's existing social games for that territory. "Beeline" is expected to publish eight new social games for smartphones by the end of the FY2011 fiscal year. Separately, Capcom will continue to publish smartphone games based on its celebrated intellectual property under the "Capcom" name targeting the "hardcore" gamer.
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