| Former type | Kabushiki gaisha |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer magazines, Video games |
| Successor | ASCII Media Works, Agetec, and Enterbrain |
| Founded | June 24, 1991 |
| Defunct | April 1, 2008 |
| Headquarters | Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan |
| Key people | Kiyoshi Takano, President |
ASCII Corporation (株式会社アスキー Kabushiki kaisha Asukī) was a publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. It became a subsidiary of Kadokawa Group Holdings in 2004, and merged with another Kadokawa subsidiary MediaWorks on April 1, 2008, and became ASCII Media Works.[1][2] The company published Monthly ASCII as the main publication. ASCII, The American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a previously dominant character encoding for the Latin alphabet.
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ASCII was co-founded by Kazuhiko Nishi and Keiichiro Tsukamoto in 1977. Originally a publisher of a magazine with the same name ASCII, talks between Bill Gates and Nishi led to a creation of Microsoft's first overseas sales office, ASCII Microsoft, in 1979.[3][4]Nishi was also known for being the creator of the MSX in 1983, an 8 bits standard computers well known in the former USSR and Japan. In 1984, ASCII engaged itself in semiconductor business, followed by a further expansion into commercial online service in 1985 under the brand of ASCII-NET. As the popularity of home video game systems soared in the 1980s, ASCII became active in the development and publishing of software for popular consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Mega Drive. After Microsoft's public stock offering in 1986, ASCII Microsoft was dissolved.[3] At around the same time, the company was also obliged to reform itself as a result of its aggressive diversification in the first half of 1980s.[5] The company went public in 1989.
ASCII's revenue in its fiscal year ending March 1996 was 56 billion yen, broken down by sectors: Publication (52.5% or 27.0 billion yen), Game entertainment (27.8% or 14.3 billion yen), Systems & semiconductors (10.8% or 6 billion yen) and others.[5] Despite its struggles to remain focused on its core businesses, the company continued to suffer from accumulated debts, until an arrangement was set up that CSK Corporation execute a major investment into ASCII in 1997.[6]
ASCII had become popular in the software market that it branched out and created an American satellite in 1991 known as ASCII Entertainment. To focus on supporting the interactive entertainment channel in America, startup company Agetec (for "Ascii Game Entertainment TEChnology") was spun off as an independent corporation in 1998 and later became a fully independent publisher one year later. Co-founder Tsukamoto had left ASCII to create a company of his own in 1992, named Impress.[7]
On 2001-11-26, CSK Corporation and Unison Capital Partners L.P. announced the approval of transferring the control of its subsidiary ASCII Corporation to Unison Capital Partners L.P., effective on 2002-03-30, as part of the strategy to focus the CSK's group operations on B2B businesses[8][9]. The transfer was approved on 2001-12-21.[10]. As a part of deal, ASCII's outstanding debt owed to CSK was forgiven, and under Unison's control, the ASCII's Enterbrain and IT publishing divisions would maintain autonomy, while ASCII was restructured to concentrate on PC and IT publishing businesses.
On 2002-05-28, Unison Media Partners announced ASCII Corporation would became its fully owned subsidiary of via share exchange, and ASCII would be delisted, effective on 2002-10-1.[11]
On 2002-11-18, the Astroarts subsidiary was renamed to ASCII Corporation, while ASCII Corporation was renamed to MediaLeaves, Inc. (株式会社メディアリーヴス).[12] The former Astroarts subsidiary would inherit the publishing business of the former ASCII Corporation.
On 2004-01-29, Unison Capital Partners, L.P. announced the sale of ASCII Corporation's parent company MediaLeaves, Inc. to Kadokawa Group Holdings, to be completed on 2004-03.[13][14]
On 2007-09-27, Kadokawa Group Holdings announced the merger between subsidiaries MediaWorks Inc. and ASCII Corporation under the name ASCII Media Works, Inc. (株式会社アスキー・メディアワークス), effective on 2008-04-01.[1][2] The merger was approved in 2008.[15] On 2010-10-1, the formerly named ASCII Corporation company MediaLeaves, Inc. was merged into Enterbrain Inc., dissolving the last of the ASCII Corporation entity.[16]