Genius Sonority (ジニアス・ソノリティ株式会社, Jiniasu Sonoriti Kabushiki Kaisha) is a Japanese video game development studio, whose staff consists of programmers who have previously worked on the Dragon Quest series of video games.
History
Genius Sonority was incorporated in June 2002 for the original purpose of developing Pokémon games for home consoles, with funding provided by Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi’s Q Fund, a cash reserve used for Nintendo game company start-ups.[3] Current shareholders of the company include Yamana Satoru, Nintendo, and The Pokémon Company.[1] The company's founder and current president, Manabu Yamana, is best known as a key person at Heartbeat, a company that developed games in the Dragon Quest series for Enix.[4] Yamana was joined in his efforts by members of Creatures Inc., the second-party Nintendo affiliate, which jointly owns the Pokémon Company and IP along with Nintendo and Game Freak.[4]
Genius Sonority's current flagship franchise is The Denpa Men, an RPG franchise revolving around forming a party by catching creatures known as "Denpa Men", who are randomly generated based on nearby Wi-Fi signals. The first game in the franchise, The Denpa Men: They Came By Wave, was released on Nintendo 3DS in 2012, and several games followed, including a mobile title and an entry for Nintendo Switch.