Kabam Launches $50 Million Fund to Bring Japanese Games to the West

California-based game studio Kabam has set up a $50 million fund aimed at getting Japanese games into the Western markets of Europe and the US. Kabam’s fund will also involve assistance in localizing and translating games for export, marketing the titles, and helping developers with analytics on their game’s performance.

As noted by the WSJ, the new Kabam fund and platform puts the studio into competition with Japanese social gaming giants GREE and DeNA for the affection and allegiance of Japanese developers.

Since Kabam pitches itself as a maker of social games for hardcore gamers – not for bizarre and fairly simple games like Battle Cats – it’ll likely be more interested in promoting titles like its popular and free-to-play Kingdoms of Camelot. So this news might be positive for Japanese developers who make more complex titles like the card battle game Rage of Bahamut.

“We’re putting our money where our mouth is,” said Kabam CEO Kevin Chou, who added that a Japanese game developer can double revenue by achieving success in western markets. Although Japanese smartphone owners are great for paying up for games, the prospect of doubling the money will appeal to a lot of startup studios in Japan.

Kabam also has a Beijing studio, where it now employs nearly a hundred people after boosting numbers in December with the acquisition of Balanced Worlds. Kabam acquired two other properties last year after a $85 million series D funding round helped fuel aggressive expansion.

Kabam made more than $180 million in revenue in 2012 and now has 600 employees across the US and China.

(Source: WSJ Japan Realtime blog)