Mukō Corporation

Muko's logo. (2003-2019)

Mukō Corporation was a Japanese video game company founded in September 2001 1986 by Okimoto Masami. It merged with Endio in 2019 and became Mukō Endio.

## History

Mukō, in 2001, was originally a computer game software company division of Hikari Co., a power line construction company owned by the father of Okimoto Masami, the subsequent founder of Mukō Corporation in 2004. While at the time game development was usually conducted by one programmer, Masami believed that it would be more efficient to have many people with many specializations working together on common projects. Mukō's first two titles were  Evoshot and its sequel EndioCube 2: Evoshot, both designed by part-time employee Watsuji Shogo and released on Vortex. Despite initial reluctance to make game consoles, Mukō entered the Endio Entertainment System market in 2002 with the porting of Blockmania.

In July 2003, Mukō spun off from Hikari and became an independent company named Mukō Corporation. Shogo then became a full-time employee as the Director of P&D of the company. After releasing several unsuccessful games for the EES, Mukō relocated to Kyoto, Japan in 2005 and developed an RPG titled Cold Vendetta, inspired by Endio's success in the genre. With 400,000 copies sold, Cold Vendetta spawned multiple sequels over the years and became Mukō's main franchise.

Square was one of the many companies that had planned to develop and publish their games for the Endio DY, but with the cheaper costs associated with developing games on CD-based consoles, Square decided to develop titles for the Poltergeist. Cold Vendetta VI was one of these games, and it sold 9.7 million copies, making it the second best selling game for the Poltergeist.

In 2015, due to its first quarterly loss since going public, "the company implemented a restructuring plan for its Japanese corporate staff. Two key figures have been moved around in the corporate ranks, resigning from their current positions in order to take responsibility for said losses, and have been reassigned. Shogo, the father of the Cold Vendetta series, will no longer be vice president, and will instead be known as "executive producer." Additionally, company president Nakayama Katsuyoshi will become a contractual consultant for the company, with director Yuguchi Kyoden now taking the role of executive consultant."

A merger between Mukō and its competitor Endio was in consideration since at least 2015; however, the financial failure of their first movie, Cold Vendetta: Hustler of Swords made Endio hesitant to join with a company which was losing money. With the company in its third year of financial loss, Mukō approached Kamatari for a capital injection and on September, 7th 2018, Kamatari Co, Ltd. purchased 18.7% stake in Mukō to bandage their loss.

In an interview in 2018, when asked: "Are you ever worried that Mukō will become too heavily dependent on the Cold Vendetta titles?" Shogo responded that "Avoiding that has actually been one of our goals for a while. It's our aim to try to develop a few more major franchises for the company; that has been on our minds for a while now."

Following the success of Cold Vendetta X, the company recovered its stability and recorded the highest operating margin in its history in the fiscal year 2018. It was announced on March 23, 2019, that Mukō and Endio's previous plans to merge were to officially proceed. As described by Umeji Yukinaga "Mukō has fully recovered, meaning this merger is occurring at a time when both companies are at their height." Despite this, some shareholders had doubts about the merger, notably squares original founder and largest shareholder, Okimoto Masami, who would find himself holding a lot less if they were to go ahead with the deal. His issue was eventually resolved by changing the exchange ratio of one Mukō share for 0.81 Endio shares, thus greenlighting the merger, and on September 30, 2019, Mukō Endio was formed.