How to land one of the biggest fish in gaming: The story of Nintendo’s new mobile partner, DeNA

Above: The entry and signboards for Sakura Cafe, DeNA’s cafeteria. It was named after a founder’s dog.

Image Credit: Dale North

Made in Japan

DeNA’s headquarters are in the heart of Tokyo’s Shibuya, in a gleaming, fashionable, and relatively new 34-story mixed use high-rise, with a lobby on the 21st floor that opens up to outstanding views of greater Tokyo. ‘

The lobby is sparse and sleek, and it seemed eerily quiet. During my visit, a smart-looking meeting space remained unused, save for a quiet couple and a solo phone surfer. The receptionist might as well have been a statue. My shoes squeaked awkwardly as I browsed artwork from various games that decorated the space. They sat alongside a couple of cardboard standees celebrating DeNA’s own professional baseball team, the Yokohama DeNA BayStars. A secret door in a corner slides open to lead to a hallway that connects various meeting rooms and offices.

Unfortunately, all were dark and quiet on this day.

On another floor, though, the largest workspace seemed to house the entire staff among its rows and sections. A good deal of the more than 1,000 employees of the office share this open workspace, where department boundaries are mostly undefined. They manned computers, mostly coding or producing art. Others held impromptu meetings in the corners, over task management charts made of sticky notes. Some laughed, others snacked, and I saw one arranging toys on his desk. One was kind enough to offer me some of his Peeps marshmallow candies.

I met an engineer for Final Fantasy: Record Keeper there. He hails from Fort Smith, Ark., of all places. A brief chat revealed that he went to school at Princeton, where he studied Japanese because he enjoys games. A bilingual career group visit in Boston led him to DeNA, where he now he gets to work on one of his favorite game franchises. He said one of the things that interested him most was how diverse DeNA was.

DeNA is certainly diverse. Its global public relations person, Tomoyuki Akiyama, admitted that it’s kind of hard to keep track of all of the company’s platforms and businesses. When I asked about some signage in the office, he told me that DeNA built Japanese store Seiyu’s (a Walmart subsidiary) e-commerce platform. Somehow this led to a conversation about manga (Japanese comics), which had him pointing out that the company publishes its own exclusively available manga titles digitally on its own international platform, called Manga Box.

One of the engineers pointed me to the corner of the office, explaining that particular section housed DeNa’s Japanese idol streaming video service, called Showroom. The goal for that business is to make stars of Internet talent, he explained. DeNA is even into the geeky stuff.

Akiyama listed off several other business for DeNA during the visit, including a genetic testing service, travel, and even a social network for senior citizens. And that’s not even counting the company’s investment arm or its hand in professional sports.

Above: A colorful block featuring the DeNA logo.

Image Credit: Dale North/GamesBeat

DeNA’s future

DeNA might have continued on just fine as a publisher of games for big entertainment franchises and as a company that has its hands in so many IT sectors. But now that it is responsible for making mobile games using Nintendo’s top IPs as well as creating the social and technological backend that will power Nintendo’s console and software offerings from now on, it is essentially tied to Mario’s future.

Even with as capable as it seems, DeNA is only about 15 years old. But as it partners with Nintendo, a 126-year-old company and the maker of some of the most celebrated gaming franchises of all times, games will likely become even more of a focus for the company.

That quiet lobby and those dark office rooms are probably going to be quite busy very soon.