Nintendo Announces New Venture

Nintendo announced on Tuesday that it has teamed with Dentsu, the leading advertising company in Japan, to form a new company to develop game software. Called ND Cube, the developer will focus on the creation of portable game software, which will likely be used for Nintendo's upcoming next-generation handheld platform, the Game Boy Advance.

ND Cube will be formed on March 1 and will be capitalizedat 300 million yen (US$2.7 million). Nintendo will hold a 78 percent ownership, while Dentsu will hold 13.3 percent. The shareholders for the remaining 8.7 percent have yet to be decided.

According to Nintendo, ND Cube has a sales target of 500,000 units in the coming year, and expects profits to exceed 200 million yen ($1.8 million). These numbers are expected to rise to 2.5 million units sold annually and one billion yen ($9 million) in profits in 2001/02.

This is Nintendo's second joint venture to create a new development house for game software. Last year, Nintendo teamed with Konami to start up a new developer called Mobile 21, which also focuses on game creation for the Game Boy Advance platform.