Tose (company)

Tose Co., Ltd.
Native name	株式会社トーセ
Company type	Public (K.K)
Traded as	TYO: 4728
Industry	Video games
Founded	November 1979; 45 years ago
Headquarters	Kyoto, Japan
Key people	Shigeru Saito (Chairman & CEO); Yasuhito Watanabe (President & COO);
Products	The Legendary Starfy series; Game & Watch Gallery series
Number of employees	657 (2024)
Website	tose.co.jp

Tose Co., Ltd.^[a] (TYO: 4728) (also called Tose Software) is a Japanese video game development company based in Kyoto. It is mostly known for developing Nintendo's Game & Watch Gallery series, various Dragon Ball games, as well as other Nintendo products. Tose has developed or co-developed over 1,000 games since the company's inception in 1979, but is virtually never credited in the games themselves (an exception to this is Scarlet Nexus with Bandai Namco, Game & Watch Gallery 4 and The Legendary Starfy series, as Tose shares the copyright with Nintendo).^[2] Tose maintains a policy of having no creative input into the work they do, going so far as to refuse to put their names in the credits for most of the games they work on. As such, Tose has gained a reputation for being a "ghost developer".^[3]

History

Tose was established in November 1979 in Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto, as an independent entity from Toa Seiko Co. Ltd. It moved its head office to Otokuni-gun, Kyoto Prefecture in May 1986. In July 1988, Tose moved its head office to Yamazaki, Kyoto. In May 1990, Tose began developing software for the Game Boy and the Super Famicom.

In August 1999, Tose was listed on the Osaka Securities Exchange 2nd Section and the Kyoto Stock Exchange. In October of that year, Tose's Kyoto Head office was opened at Shijo-Karasuma, which integrated its head office functions with the Karasuma CG Center. On 27 September 2000, Tose was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange 2nd Section.^[4] In August 2001, it was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange 1st Section and Osaka Securities Exchange 1st Section.

On 18 December 2007, Tose announced the leakage of its business information onto the Internet, which was discovered the day before. The leak included 10 pieces of information relating to customer names, development cases, development contents, development fees, and reception time.^[5]

On September 1, 2011, Tose announced the separation of its amusement machine development business from its second game development department (ゲーム事業部開発２部) into a separate amusement machine developer (AM開発部).^[6]

In July 2024, it was reported that Tose was experiencing financial hardship due to a number of cancelled games from partners including Square Enix and Bandai Namco. For the period covering September 2023 to May 2024 the studio's net sales fell nearly 28%, leading to an operating loss of 599 million yen ($3.7 million).^[7]

List of games developed by Tose

NOTE: Some of these titles are merely believed or assumed to be developed by Tose, due to information compiled by various amateur and professional journalists. Most have not been officially confirmed as Tose-developed products by any of the games' publishers, co-developers, nor Tose itself. Many of the games released by Bandai, Tomy Corporation, Jaleco, Taito, Namco, Tonkin House were developed by Tose.

See also Category:Tose (company) games