 |
|
| Former type | Kabushiki kaisha |
|---|---|
| Successor | ASCII Media Works, Agetec, and Enterbrain |
| Founded | June 24, 1991 |
| Defunct | April 1, 2008 |
| Headquarters | Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan |
| Key people | Kiyoshi Takano, President |
| Industry | Computer magazines, Video games |
ASCII Corporation (株式会社アスキー Kabushiki kaisha Asukī) was a publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. It became a subsidiary of Kadokawa Group Holdings in 2004, and merged with another Kadokawa subsidiary MediaWorks on April 1, 2008, and became ASCII Media Works.[1][2] The company published Monthly ASCII as the main publication.
Contents |
ASCII was co-founded by Kazuhiko Nishi and Keiichiro Tsukamoto in 1977. Originally a publisher of a magazine with the same name ASCII, talks between Bill Gates and Nishi led to a creation of Microsoft's first overseas sales office, ASCII Microsoft, in 1979.[3][4] In 1984, ASCII engaged itself in semiconductor business, followed by a further expansion into commercial online service in 1985 under the brand of ASCII-NET. As the popularity of home video game systems soared in the 1980s, ASCII became active in the development and publishing of software for popular consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Mega Drive. After Microsoft's public stock offering in 1986, ASCII Microsoft was dissolved[3]. At around the same time, the company was also obliged to reform itself as a result of its aggressive diversification in the first half of 1980s.[5] The company went public in 1989.
ASCII's revenue in its fiscal year ending March 1996 was 56 billion yen, broken down by sectors: Publication (52.5% or 27.0 billion yen), Game entertainment (27.8% or 14.3 billion yen), Systems & semiconductors (10.8% or 6 billion yen) and others.[5] Despite its struggles to remain focused on its core businesses, the company continued to suffer from accumulated debts, until an arrangement was set up that CSK Corporation execute a major investment into ASCII in 1997.[6]
ASCII had become popular in the software market that it branched out and created an American satellite in 1991 known as ASCII Entertainment. To focus on supporting the interactive entertainment channel in America, startup company Agetec (for "Ascii Game Entertainment TEChnology") was spun off as an independent corporation in 1998 and later became a fully independent publisher one year later. Co-founder Tsukamoto had left ASCII to create a company of his own in 1992, named Impress.[7]
In 2001, it was announced that CSK, to concentrate its group's business to B2B sector, would transfer its ASCII shares to capital fund Unison.[8] As a part of tighter reorganization carried out by Unison to slim down the company to its original IT and PC publishing, ASCII ceased all videogame development and publication in Japan as of March 2002. ASCII was then sold to Kadokawa in 2004,[9] and was finally merged with another Kadokawa company MediaWorks on April 1, 2008 to become ASCII Media Works.[1][2]
|
|
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
