LINE Corp. and Sega Games (6460) announced a marketing partnership for mobile games in Japan during a joint press conference yesterday.
Not too surprisingly, Sega will act as the developer and publisher under the deal, while LINE Corp. will offer its messenger app as a platform for mass marketing and distribution.
The reason LINE gave for choosing this particular partner is Sega’s strong portfolio of mid-core games (at least over here on the Japanese market), a field LINE still struggles to expand into.
Sega’s motivation for teaming up with LINE is simple: the chat app boasts 50 million+ MAU in Japan alone, and while it currently offers 67 different titles on its LINE Game platform, the number of RPGs and other “non-casual” titles is relatively low.
(LINE Corp. said all of their games combined have been downloaded 605 million times since it started this business back in 2012.)
The two companies announced a series of LINE-exclusive games for the future and also unveiled the first app already, a 3D action RPG called Fortisia.
The game will offer real-time battles for up to four players, a chat function, “customizable avatars”, and a set of over 400 character cards in the first version.
Sega already accepts pre-registrations for the app, which will be released by year-end in Japan.
The two companies involved in the partnership didn’t elaborate on the possibility of future Sega/LINE games making it to international markets.
Here are some early Fortisia screenshots: 
