A trifecta of companies are working together to bring anime fans a slew of online and mobile games in the near future, and it’s sure to be pretty awesome for anime fans. The announcement was made yesterday that FUNimation Entertainment, GameSamba, and NGames Interactive Limited would join forces to bring new virtual content to people in a different medium – a decision that makes perfect sense. The video games are slated to be mainly designed as free-to-play games based on popular anime titles (hence FUNimation’s involvement.) Jacky Yung, CEO of NGames, states, “Quality games based on popular series are increasing in demand, with NGames’s experience in developing and publishing games, FUNimation’s leadership in brand acquisition, marketing and rights management, and GameSamba’s expertise in the U.S. gaming market, I’m very excited to see what we can accomplish together.”

While NGames has already achieved notoriety for online gaming, the successful anime company FUNimation is equally impressed and excited, with Gen Fukunaga, President and CEO of FUNimation adding, “From day one GameSamba was a great fit with FUNimation and our strategic plan to extend our anime properties into the gaming space, now with this new strategic partnership with NGames we have the scale and technical resources to take our game development to the next level.” The trio already have games for anime series such as Tokyo Ghoul and Fairy Tail in the works – so we can expect this to expand into a wider branding opportunity by adding to a larger slate in the future.  Dr. Scott Wong, President and co-founder of GameSamba adds to the exciting announcement by explaining,  “We’ve long wanted to help create and run games based on some of our favorite series. Thanks to this new partnership, we’ll be able to make that a reality.” 

At the moment there isn’t much to visually focus on, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t progress being made already – and I’m sure other anime devotees are curious as to what the overall products will include! Are you excited about this anime/gaming union?