How NJ Holdings went from phone shops to owning Star Ocean developer tri-Ace
The company above Star Ocean developer tri-Ace in the ownership chart did not begin in games. NJ Holdings started with land-use consulting, built a business selling mobile phones and eventually bought its way into game development. That unusual route explains why a Japanese group associated with role-playing games still operates phone shops.
Its story also reveals a less visible part of the games industry. Players usually recognise a title and its publisher; the studios, support teams and parent companies doing the work behind it can remain out of sight. NJ occupies several of those positions.
The phone-shop years
NJ’s corporate profile dates its establishment to 11 December 1991. Its Japanese corporate history identifies the original business as a Kyoto consultancy focused on land use. Mobile communications followed in 1995, and the company opened its first Docomo shop in 1996.
Renamed Nepro Japan in 1997, it expanded through telecommunications sales before listing on JASDAQ in 2006. The later transformation took several steps: Game Studio joined the group in 2011, a holding-company structure arrived in 2014 and the NJ Holdings name was adopted in December 2015. Mobile retail remained part of the group through the changes.
tri-Ace brought a history of its own
tri-Ace became a Nepro Japan subsidiary in March 2015. The developer had been established in March 1995, so its creative identity and earlier games predated the acquisition by twenty years. NJ did not create the studio or originate all the franchises associated with it.
The studio’s product catalogue traces that legacy from the original Star Ocean, released in Japan in 1996, through Valkyrie Profile in 1999 and Star Ocean: The Divine Force in 2022. Its continued console and PC work shows why describing NJ simply as a mobile-games company misses a substantial part of the business.
There is newer activity alongside those established names. In May 2026, tri-Ace announced the Steam release of OCTOPinbs. A studio’s best-known series can explain its reputation without fully describing what its team is making today.
The work behind somebody else’s game
NJ describes contract development as the centre of its games business. Its capabilities span planning, programming, graphics, sound and operations across consoles, PCs, smartphones and arcade equipment. The commercial customer is often another company bringing the finished game to players.
That makes NJ different from a business measured only by sales of franchises it owns. On a commissioned project, delivery schedules, agreed budgets and the availability of skilled teams can matter as much as a game’s eventual visibility. A development credit establishes a contribution; it does not automatically mean the studio owns the intellectual property or receives every sale’s revenue.
The group’s corporate profile lists Bandai Namco Entertainment among its principal clients. That relationship places NJ within a wider production network in which publishers and specialist developers perform different jobs. Its challenges also sit alongside those explored in WonderPlanet’s mobile-game history, where building a sustainable flow of projects matters beyond any single release.
Supporting games after launch
NJ expanded into game customer support by establishing Wit One in 2017. It subsequently brought additional game-operations support into that business. The broader portfolio has also changed through disposals: the group sold its remaining holding in Delta Engineering in July 2023. Older descriptions that foreground a general engineering-staffing operation therefore need to be read against the later structure.
In its 2026 results, NJ identified Game Studio, tri-Ace, Wit One and Tech Flag among the companies carrying out game development and operations work. Support services give the group work beyond creating a title for launch, including helping clients serve players across markets.
Why phone shops are still in the picture
The mobile business operates through Nepro Create, with au shops and PiPoPark stores selling devices and services from multiple carriers. Staff help customers navigate devices and tariff choices. These are physical retail and customer-service activities, with different operating demands from a development studio.
The combination can look unusual from a player’s perspective, but it follows the group’s acquisition and restructuring history. NJ retained an established retail operation while building a games organisation beside it. It also reports a smaller “other” segment that includes credit-payment services.
Growth in 2026 came with an uneven result
For the year ended 30 June 2026, NJ reported revenue of ¥9.949 billion, up 9.2%, and operating profit of ¥183 million. The final result was a ¥119 million loss attributable to owners of the parent.
Games generated ¥6.969 billion of revenue, while mobile generated ¥2.925 billion. NJ said growth in overseas-facing game-support work helped offset pressure from completed operating titles and higher project costs. The figures show why the group cannot be understood through its best-known studio alone: support contracts and phone retail also materially affect the outcome.
A revised plan puts project selection in focus
On 18 September 2026, NJ revised its medium-term plan. It lowered the June 2027 games-segment profit target from ¥600 million to ¥500 million and raised the mobile target from ¥100 million to ¥150 million. Management described a greater emphasis on selecting development projects and improving their profitability, alongside demand for services such as translation.
The group retained a ¥400 million medium-term operating-profit goal. Its separately published forecast for the same financial year was ¥320 million; the company explicitly acknowledged that gap. A strategic target and a financial forecast express different levels of expectation and should not be treated as the same promise.
NJ’s next phase depends on how well those pieces fit together: studios that can win worthwhile projects, support teams that keep games running and retailers that turn local customer relationships into earnings. The surprising path from phone shops to tri-Ace is the history. Making that collection of businesses consistently profitable is the work still ahead.
