Q: As for the concept about the additional growth investment of 100.0 billion yen, it seems this is an additional investment in addition to the base, but in the first place, how much is your base annual investments? Can you also share the area you are planning to invest (e.g. expansion of existing IPs, creation of new IPs, creation of Super Game, etc.) and the scale of investment in each area?
A: The image of base R&D expenses is about 50.0 billion yen per year at the moment. In future phase, R&D expenses are expected to increase as we are proceeding aggressive recruitment in domestic and overseas for the further enhancement of R&D resources. We are also expecting the reinforce of R&D resource by M&A, etc. within this additional investment of 100.0 billion yen. We'd also like to invest in maintenance of office environment in addition to aggressive recruitment, as the working environment, especially for overseas studios, is highly regarded and partially this leads to the creation of hit titles. Other expected area for investment are acquisition of IPs and supplementation of value chains. We think our value chains are still weak in order to compete in global and online game market. As the expertise is being acquired through the roll-out of "PHANTASY STAR ONLINE 2", we'd like to invest to enhance this. Also, about acquisition of IPs, we would like to consider if there are good studios, regardless of whether it is domestic or overseas. Although we would like to consider various possibilities, since M&A is subject to the circumstances of the other party, and at the same time, it is important that the acquisition price is reasonable, we will proceed with careful consideration. I also think that it would be better to work with partners on new technologies and domains, including NFT, rather than dealing with them in-house, and I would like to consider investing in such fields.
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