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Game Publisher CyberFront Closes its Doors

Game publisher CyberFront's parent company Kaga Electronics announced on Thursday it has decided to dissolve the subsidiary company.

Kaga Electronics acquired 51% of CyberFront in 2010 and supported it as it continued publishing games. However, Kaga notes the financial conditions at CyberFront never improved, and in order to quickly improve the situation, Kaga acquired the entire company. Kaga added that although it tried to reform CyberFront, it found the administrative system set up by previous management to be too much of a problem, and decided to close it down.

CyberFront was established as a game publishing company in 1998. Over the years, the company localized many foreign games for the Japanese market, including the Half Life and Doom series. After visual novel developer KID closed in 2006, CyberFront took over such titles as Ever17: The Out of Infinity, Monochrome, and Remember11 -the age of infinity-, and ported them to various platforms including the iPhone and PlayStation Portable. The company's final game, Tokyo Shin Seiki: Operation Abyss, is currently scheduled to ship in Japan for the PS Vita on January 23, 2014.

Hajime Chikami, the president of the game developer Experience, expressed his shock and confusion on Thursday over the sudden news. Experience is developing Tokyo Shin Seiki: Operation Abyss, and Chikami added that his company will continue to do its best, but he cannot officially say if the game will be delayed.

Game developer KID released the original Ever17 game in August 2002 in Japan, and the now-defunct Hirameki International released the game in 2005 in North America. CyberFront collaborated with 5pb. to release a complete remake of the game for the Xbox 360 in 2011, which included new routes, completely re-done graphics, and re-recorded voices. Chigusa Umetani illustrated a manga version that ran on Enterbrain's Famitsu Comic Clear website from 2011-2012 with two compiled volumes.

[Via 0takomu]