The Pokémon Company

The Pokémon Company (株式会社ポケモン, Kabushiki gaisha Pokemon) is a company that is responsible for marketing and licensing the Pokémon franchise. It was established through joint investment by the three businesses holding the copyright on Pokémon: Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. It began operating in 1998 and adopted the moniker Pokémon Ltd. in 2000. The company is headquartered in the Roppongi Hills MTower in Roppongi Rokuchome, Minato, Tokyo.

The company has separate divisions that handle operations in different parts of the world, with The Pokémon Company International supporting the territories outside Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. In South Korea, the operations are handled by Pokémon Korea, Inc.

History

The company's operations began in 1998 with the opening of the Pokémon Center store in Tokyo, before the actual trademark of "Pokémon, Ltd." was established in 2000. Since then this branch has been marketed as The Pokémon Company. The United States branch (Pokémon USA, Inc.) opened in 2001 to handle licensing overseas.Nintendo Australia does all licensing and marketing of Pokémon products in Australia and New Zealand, as The Pokémon Company does not have an Australian branch.

Tsunekazu Takeda

Tsunekazu Takeda (竹田 恆和, Takeda Tsunekazu, born November 1, 1947) is a retired Japanese equestrian and the current President of the Japanese Olympic Committee.

Biography

Takeda was born the third son of Prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda. His great-grandfather was the Emperor Meiji. Both Tsunekazu Takeda and his son Tsuneyasu Takeda studied at Keio University and later taught there.

Takeda has been a keen horse rider through his whole life. He competed in show jumping at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics and finished in 16th and 13th place, respectively, with the Japanese team. Later he coached the Japanese equestrian team at the 1984, 1988 and 1992 Olympics and was Chef de Mission at the 2002 and 2004 Games.

In 1987 Takeda joined the Japanese Olympic Committee and became its president in October 2001. He has also served as a Vice-President of the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) from 1998 to 2002, and was later made a Honorary Vice-President. Takeda was sports director for the organizing committee of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. He was also elected twice as Vice-President of the Olympic Council of Asia in 2001 and 2011. As a member of the International Olympic Committee, Takeda coordinated the preparation of the 2010, 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics.

Pokémon

Pokémon (ポケモン, Pokemon, /ˈpoʊkeɪˌmɒn/ POH-kay-mon) is a media franchise owned by The Pokémon Company, and created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1995. It is centered on fictional creatures called "Pokémon", which humans known as Pokémon Trainers catch and train to battle each other for sport.

The franchise began as a pair of video games for the original Game Boy, developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo. The franchise now spans video games, trading card games, animated television shows and movies, comic books, and toys. Pokémon is the second-most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world, behind only Nintendo's Mario franchise.

The franchise celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2006. Cumulative sales of the video games (including home console games, such as Hey You, Pikachu! for the Nintendo 64) have reached more than 200 million copies. In November 2005, 4Kids Entertainment, which had managed the non-game related licensing of Pokémon, announced that it had agreed not to renew the Pokémon representation agreement. Pokémon USA Inc. (now The Pokémon Company International), a subsidiary of Japan's Pokémon Co., now oversees all Pokémon licensing outside of Asia. As of 2013, the Pokémon media franchise has grossed revenues of ¥4 trillion worldwide (equivalent to US$37.76 billion). The brand earned $2 billion in 2014 alone.

Pokémon GO

Pokémon GO is an upcoming augmented reality game for mobile phones developed by Niantic, scheduled to be released in 2016 for iOS and Android devices. The game will be released alongside the Pokémon Go Plus, a small wearable device developed by Nintendo, which uses a Bluetooth connection to notify users when a Pokémon is nearby with a LED and a light rumble. The game will allow players to capture, battle, train and trade virtual Pokémon who appear throughout the real world. The game will be free-to-play, although it will support in-app purchases.

The idea for the game was conceived in 2013 by Satoru Iwata of Nintendo and Tsunekazu Ishihara of The Pokémon Company. In 2015, Ishihara dedicated his speech at the game's announcement on September 10 to Iwata, who died two months earlier. Ishihara and his wife had played Ingress. Different Pokémon will live in different areas of the world - for example, water type Pokémon will live near water. There will be events held where players can trade Pokémon to build up their collection. A wristband device called the "Pokémon Go Plus" will ship with the game, to allow a more "heads-up" gaming experience than Ingress, where the player can be alerted to a nearby Pokémon by the Go Plus vibrating, press the button in a coded sequence to capture it and check the app later to find out what they've captured. The decision to create the Go Plus rather than create a smart watch app was to increase uptake among players for whom a smart watch is prohibitively expensive.

Tekken 7

Tekken 7 (鉄拳7) is a fighting game developed and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment as the ninth installment in the Tekken series. The game is the first in the series to make use of the Unreal Engine. Tekken 7 had a limited arcade release in Japan on February 18, 2015, followed by another unfinished release on March 18, 2015. As of July 2015, the game is in its beta stage of development.

It is scheduled to be released for PlayStation 4, and is also designed to be functional with the upcoming PlayStation VR system. Other platforms are to be announced.

An updated title for the arcades, Tekken 7 Fated Retribution (鉄拳7フェイテドレトリビューション, Tekken 7 Feitedo Retoribyūshon) was announced in December 2015. It will feature an expanded content including new stages, costumes, items, and characters.

Gameplay