 | |
Native name | 株式会社プロペ |
|---|---|
Romanized name | Kabushiki-gaisha Purope |
| Company type | Private |
| Industry | Video games |
| Founded | May 23, 2006 (Foundation) June 1, 2006 (Operations began) |
| Representative Director President | Hiroshi Nakai |
| Headquarters | Japan |
Key people | Yuji Naka |
Number of employees | 40 (until April 2017) |
Prope Ltd. (株式会社プロペ,Kabushiki-gaisha Purope) is a Japanesevideo game development studio founded bySonic Team headYuji Naka, along with 10 other former Sonic Team staff.
The company name means "near" in Latin.
As part ofSega's "support program for independent game creators", Yuji Naka left Sega's Sonic Team studio to start his own studio, joined by ten Sonic Team members. It had astarting capital of 10 million yen, 10% of which came from Sega in exchange for theright of first refusal for publishing Prope games.[1] Prope was founded on May 23, 2006 and began operations on June 1.[2]
Prope intended to create games with a graphical style that appealed to both children and adults, and to explore the possibilities of developing both3D and2D games.[3] Naka joinedSquare Enix in January 2018, leaving the status of Prope uncertain.[4] In March 2019, Naka confirmed that Prope had been reduced to a one-person company since the end of April 2017.[5]
Naka releasedSHOT2048 under the Prope brand in December 2021, his first game following his departure from Square Enix back in April.[6]
Previously, the studio had been consistently linked with a sequel toNights into Dreams...,[7] thoughNights: Journey of Dreams was ultimately developed bySega Studio USA. Naka has claimed in an interview that he presently has no intention to revisit any of his former Sega properties.[8]
Prope's first two titles, theWiirhythm gameLet's Tap, and theWiiWare gameLet's Catch, were both released in December 2008. Both games were published by Sega.
After a series of simplistic iOS games such as10 Count Boxer andFluffy Bear, under the iPrope label, Prope's next major gameIvy the Kiwi? was released in November 2009 exclusively forWindows Phone, withMicrosoft publishing it. In April 2009, it was ported toWiiWare andDSiWare and published byBandai Namco in Japan,Xseed Games in America andRising Star Games in Europe as Prope's parent company Sega refused to publish the game andBandai Namco decided not to publish the game outside Asia. In 2010, an expanded physical release (in contrast to a digital one) was released forWii andNintendo DS, featuring 50 levels (whereas the downloadable version featured 25) as well as original backgrounds and music for each level.
In 2011, Prope releasedReal Ski Jump, which, as of 2014, had been downloaded 4 million times.[9]
Published under the iPrope and aPrope label respectively