 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Video games |
| Predecessors | Paon Corporation, Ltd. DP Co., Ltd. |
| Founded | August 3, 2004 [1] |
| Headquarters | Kita, Tokyo, Japan |
Key people | Kaishun Kihara (president and CEO) Ken Yamamoto (vice-president) Nobuo Iwata Rikiya Nakagawa Tatsuya Watanabe (former presidents of Paon) Iwao Horita (former vice-president of Paon) |
Number of employees | 44 (as of 2023)[1] |
| Website | paon-dp |
Paon DP Co., Ltd. (株式会社パオン・ディーピー) is a Japanese video game developer. The company was founded in August 2004 as DP Inc. and merged with Paon Corporation, Ltd. in March 2015 to form Paon DP.[1]
Paon Corporation was founded on January 20, 1999.[2] Through a partnership with Nintendo, Paon developed DK: King of Swing, Donkey Kong Barrel Blast and DK: Jungle Climber. Paon was also involved in development of 2000 SNK's Neo Geo Pocket Color fighting game titles, SNK Gals' Fighters as composer and sound work team, as well as composer to some other Neo Geo Pocket Color titles.
When the company Data East went bankrupt, Paon Corporation bought the rights to some of their games, including Karnov,[3] Chelnov,[3] and Windjammers[4] as well as the Glory of Heracles[5][6] and Kuuga series,[7] all of which are now owned by Paon DP.[1] Paon developed Glory of Heracles in 2008, the sixth title of the Glory of Heracles series, which was published by Nintendo. The rights to that game are split between Paon and Nintendo[8] with the latter owning the trademark as well.[9][10]
In 2010, the company entered into the business of mobile game development.
Paon merged with DP Co., Ltd. on March 1, 2015 to form Paon DP. An associate company of pachislot maker Daito Giken, (since the company's chairman is the same as Daito Giken).
As a result of the merger, DP became the surviving entity while Paon Corporation was dissolved. The new company now develops mobile games only to Japan, as well as often licensing their owned properties, in 2017, Paon DP moved its headquarters to Kita, Tokyo.
A large amount of developers who were previously at Paon ended up at another Japanese video game developer called Picola Co., Ltd. [11], which was formed at the same time as the Paon/DP merger in February 2015 and later co-developed the game Little Dragons Café, a cafe-management and dragon-raising simulator that was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2018. [12]