Kankuto Shūdaki
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 The logo of Kankuto Shūdaki, used since the early 90's | |
 Image of the Kankuto Building, constructed in Fuzan | |
| Iminchebol | |
| Industry | Video Games, Electronics |
| Predecessor | Riwāgyō |
| Founded | August 3rd, 1986, Omiskan Neo-Korea |
| Founder | Chinen Shigeru |
| Headquarters | 12-2 Shiōro, , |
Area served | Neo-Korea |
Key people | Miura Kaoru (President) Nagai Yutaka (Chief Operating Officer) |
| Products | List of Kankuto Products |
| Brands | Video game franchises Video game consoles |
Production output | Hardware: 9.32 Million (2034) Software: 114.5 Million (2034) |
| Revenue | c. 370.8 Billion MSD (2033) |
| c. 80.75 Billion MSD (2033) | |
| c. 41.56 Billion MSD (2033) | |
| Total assets | c. 712 Billion MSD (2033) |
| Total equity | c. 549 Billion MSD (2033) |
Number of employees | 13,580 (2033) |
| Divisions | Kankuto Eiga, Kankuto Tayori |
Kankuto Shūdaki, more commonly shortened to Kankuto, is a Neo-Korean media and electronics conglomerate / semi-Iminchebol headquartered in Fuzan. It develops, publishes, and releases video games, consoles for said video games, and has a role in a number of other media formats through its subordinate groupings, the movie-focused Kankuto Eiga and the news-focused Kankuto Tayori.
Kankuto was founded in 1986, following the reforms put into place early into the Okuma Taro regime in regards to loosening the requirements to form an Iminchebol-type corporate entity. Its founder, Chinen Shigeru, was a previous member of the HAOPMU development team, who wished to take his software capabilities into a less-crowded field. He would found Kankuto with the assistince of the Karasu Iminchebol, which provided the initial facilities and continues to have a minority role in the provision of resources for developers, despite the eventual ending of the direct relation / connection between the two entities.
Kankuto has been responsible for a fair amount of Kāichrén cultural production in recent years, through both their video games and through their role in the production of other media. They have spread Semakunaru Horror to a wider audience, created many modern conventions of the political simulation and role-playing game genres (through Seikai-Mane and Konsāti respectively), have created internationally renowned products like their early Ochirukku puzzle game, and generally continue to push civilian technological innovation through their work on consoles.
History
Formation
Kankuto would be formed, as mentioned, in the wake of Okuma Taro's 1986 reforms to the formation of Iminchebol-type structures. These reforms, which were intended to provide both funding and support to new industries in under-utilized fields, such as domestic entertainment or film-making, would appeal to Chinen Shigeru, an ex-HAOPMU programmer who wished to turn his experience into something he could utilize in a more adventurous field. With this in mind, he would gather much of his savings, and would use such to rent a small office in Sabi where he would begin programming his first game, the block-stacking game Ochirukku. Ochirukku would be an early and massive success, allowing him to recoup much of the funding he had spent and also causing him to get in contact with members of the Karasu Iminchebol.
Kankuto would also begin hiring and interacting with engineers in mass around this time, alongside expanding into additional fields under Chinen's direction - with Kantoku acquiring ownership of one of Sabi's smaller newspapers, which it would convert into a source of information on upcoming products which also contained data on local events, allowing it to maintain and even pick up popularity to some extent. Chinen's liasons with engineering groups would eventually lead to him meeting his most important subordinate, Koyama Eiji, who had gone to Meridon in the past and had such become interested in game consoles as a distribution network. In exchange for his support in other projects, Eiji would be allowed to begin work on a console to be promoted and distributed by Kankuto.
Chinen would also begin a partnership with the similarly-young Kaneko-Dezusu Iminchebol, eventually culminating in a deal where Kan-Dez would produce plush figures (known as Nuiikon) of characters from Kankuto's Mayonaka Fantajī series of roleplaying games, alongside with similar figures of other popular franchises, with this partnership continuing into the modern day.
Expansion and Karasu
Shortly after the conclusion of the Kaneko-Dezusu deal, Kankuto would be approached by the Karasu Iminchebol, which offered a working space in the city of Omiskan and support in finding adequate figures to be hired in exchange for promotion of Karasu products in their work and general support in certain aspects of coding. This deal would be accepted, in part because Chinen had already been working to expand - and had been running into difficulties with such due to the limited space available in Sabi. He would therefore move the majority of his work and staff to Omiskan, personally acquiring them housing in one of the apartment blocks located nearest to their new building in order to ensure he could maintain easy interaction and capacity for connection with them.
The move would cause a number of set-backs, including the delay of the first Kōkai! exploration simulator, but would in hindsight be regarded as a good decision which had generally positive effects, owing to the increased space allowing for the hiring of more figures to work on Koyama's passion project - the Kankuto 8U310, a 16-bit home console with the capacity to render 512 colors at once, advanced audio capacities, and an absolutely ruinous price were it to be produced solely by Kankuto. This is where the Karasu Deal would be expanded once again - with the production and distribution of the console being handed over to them in exchange for Karasu taking a 20% portion of the profits. The 8U310 was set to release in early 1990, and would successfully meet its goal for such despite worries amongst the development team.
First Console
The 8U310 would be a smash success within Neo-Korea when it was released in 1990, with the console being one of the first to properly incorporate 16 bit graphics - alongside its possession of a strong roster of games even at a early stage, it would become one of the most produced civilian luxuries in the early years of the 90's, coinciding with the general growth of civilian economic focus on the part of the state, which especially became noticable as Beom Dae came closer to seizing power. Kankuto would also see another move during this period, being drawn by a special regimen of subsidies for civilian industries which would move to Fuzan, with their headquarters to be constructed on 12-2 Shiōro Road, alongside other new hubs of cultural industry.
1995 Reforms
Kankuto would be one of the major corporations most impacted by the 1995 Economic Reforms, a trend seen with other cultural productive centers during this time as well. The fundamental issue of the reforms, in relation to non-traditional cultural industries or recreational centers, was that they were not able to be "rationalized" in the same fashion as other key industries. Media was an unreliable variable in the eyes of many of the implementers of the Masa Plan - it was dependent upon skill, cultural mood, and sometimes even just blind luck to reach a wide audience - and therefore the initial Classification for the role was a mere Type-D+, on the same level as other minor cultural functionaries such as park custodians and not on the same level as Type-B roles like classical artists or musicians.
This plan would see notable resistance, both by Kantoku and by affiliated industries - but the most shocking showing of distaste for the original plan would be from Beom Dae himself, who had come to believe that Masa's plan had been lacking in the understanding that these cultural media could be used as a means of enforcing societal role in a more effective fashion than disregarding them would allow. Therefore, he would have the role of a member of a major cultural industry raised to a Type-C+ role, with leadership of teams related to artistic or practical design of both consoles and games themselves being risen to an even higher Type-B role. This concession of cultural import would lead to a greater investment in the field, which would lead to Neo-Korean development of a number of technologies relating to both consoles and general game development as it entered the 2000's.
Also around this period, Miura Kaoru would succeed Chinen Shigeru as head of the company following his retirement due to a prolonged illness.
KGK and Dejikonsōru
Moving into the 2000's, Kantoku would approach Sanshei for the purposes of investigating the creation of a jointly designed on-the-go console. This decision was, at the time, made because of Sanshei's own investigations into the industry seeming promising, although lacking in direct means to produce the ambitious designs they had shown. Interactions between Sanshei and Kantoku would initially go well, with agreement on the broad scope of the project being released - before things took a severe turn for the worse a few months into the project.
The CEO of Sanshei, Tamanaha Norio, was replaced by Moriko Kuse shortly into the beginning of the project - with Kuse and Kaoru having possessed negative relations in the past, this lead to sabotage of the project on both sides - with the design teams being explicitly told to steal as much knowledge from one another as possible. Over the course of two years, relations would continue to depreciate until, in early 2002, the joint project was cancelled entirely, with Kantoku instead deciding to work on what they now called the "KGK" individually. The KGK was to be a handheld console, capable of utilization on the go while also providing a consistent stream of production for Kankuto, which was experiencing delays and general slowdowns in production of games.
In early 2006, following four years of work starting in 2002, the KGK would release - being another massive success in the console industry for Kankuto, with the mobility and wide variety of existing games making it one of Kantoku's most successful products. It would be followed by the Dejikonsōru in 2010, a communal recreation device designed to capitalize on advancements in the digital downloading of games to reduce the space necessary for storing discs and other such systems. While this would fail due to concerns over media archival capabilities, necessitating the inclusion of a disc-reading peripheral, at the time the concept would be perceived generally positively - allowing Kantoku to adopt some level of "futurism" as an brand and cultural identity in the modern era.
Modern Era
Products
Consoles
Kankuto has been responsible for three of Neo-Korea's most internationally recognizable console offerings, the Kankuto 8U310, Kankuto KGK, and Kankuto Dejikonsōru - the latter also being one of the first consoles to focus primarily on the digital downloading of games, in what was an attempt to liberate such systems from the requirements of storing discs and also to allow for changes to games after their release. While the latter would be successful, pressure against the idea that games could be made without physical mediums - and therefore that they could be lost forever in the event the company took the game down - meant that a peripheral allowing for disc reading would be included for free with later models of the Dejikonsōru.
The Kankuto KGK was initially designed as a partnership between Kankuto and Sanshei, although the partnership would break down over distribution rights and existing negative relations between Sanshei CEO Moriko Kuse and Kankuto President Miura Kaoru. A similar deal was considered with Karasu for the development of the Dejikonsōru, although that concept was scrapped far earlier in the design process due to differing conceptions on how such a console would need to function and lacking capacity to coordinate work, due to the ongoing struggles Karasu was experiencing during that period.