Japanese Game Maker Nippon Ichi Is Overlooked Winner of Weak Yen
- Creator of Disgaea makes role-playing games with anime touch
- Firm’s costs are mostly in yen, but 60% of sales is in dollars
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Nippon Ichi Software Inc. -- a 213-person video game developer based in central Japan -- is an unnoticed winner of the yen’s recent plunge.
The role-playing game maker is based in Gifu, a mountainous and predominantly rural prefecture, where average wages are 20% lower than in Tokyo, all paid out in yen. But more than half of the company’s sales are in dollars, and that proportion will likely grow further thanks to a Japanese anime boom among US gamers, Nippon Ichi President Sohei Niikawa told Bloomberg News in an interview.