CRI in Numbers!

CRI was established in August 2001 when the middleware division of CSK Research Institute, Ltd. was spun off for the purpose of developing and selling middleware (the company name at the time was CRI Middleware, Ltd.).

After that, CRI became capital independent from the parent company through an EBO by our executives and employees. In January 2005, the company name was changed to the current “CRI Middleware Co., Ltd. ” In November 2014, CRI was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers (now the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth).

On the business side, since CRI’s establishment, its core business has been the provision of middleware to the gaming sector, but CRI has expanded its business domain into various fields, including karaoke, automobiles, home appliances, IoT devices, web videos and surveillance cameras, starting with the provision of middleware for the amusement machine sector in 2010.

The Group developed the online communications middleware “CRI TeleXus,” and focused on expanding its business base and creating Group synergies by establishing an R&D operation focusing on markets and businesses expected to grow in the future, such as mobility.

The following are the operating results by segment.

1- Gaming Business
Although there was a one-time license sale in the current year, the scale was not as large as in the previous year, and domestic license sales of the Company’s middleware CRIWARE and other products decreased. On the other hand, in overseas markets, while the licensing business in China recovered, the content outsourcing business and the licensing business in Europe and the United States were sluggish, resulting in a decline in overseas sales. In audio production, which is operated by TWOFIVE Co., Ltd., we achieved record sales and profits due to strong sales of sound effects and music production services and orders for large-scale audio recording services in the second half of the year. Game development and operation sales have been eliminated due to the transfer of all shares in R-FORCE ENTERTAINMENT, Inc., which was responsible for this field, at the end of the previous fiscal year. As a result, sales in this segment decreased significantly compared to the previous fiscal year. The Company continues to invest in R&D of CRI TeleXus in this segment. Net sales in this segment were 1,676,762 thousand yen (down 15.0% year on year) and segment income was 116,713 thousand yen (down 36.9% year on year).

2- Enterprise Business
Sales in the embedded systems segment increased due to continued orders for karaoke equipment and orders for the development of the ePICO system for SEGA FAVE CORPORATION. Sales in the mobility business increased due to an increase in license revenue for CRI ADX Automotive, an in-vehicle sound solution, and CRI Glassco, an in-vehicle graphic display solution.Sales in the cloud solutions segment increased due to the strong performance of large-scale system development projects for which orders were received from several customers, including Pole To Win, Inc. Net sales in this segment were 1,490,523 thousand yen (up 46.2% year on year) and segment income was 251,645 thousand yen (up 57.4% year on year).

CRIWARE is the collective name for the technologies, products, and services we provide, as well as a testament to our success in improving video and audio quality, speeding-up development cycles, and enhancing cost/performance ratios.

CRIWARE has been adopted in games, apps, and arcade game machines more than 8,700 times worldwide (as of 30th September 2024). Each new hardware device is thoroughly researched and investigated by our teams, which tune and optimize our software to maximize the quality and performance of the customer’s content.

-Advantages of adopting CRIWARE-

1. Multi-platform support
   Development environments are available for multiple platforms and operating systems, facilitating horizontal development of content, such as developing a single game title for iOS, Android, PlayStation®5, Nintendo Switch and XboxSeries X/S, to expand your business.
2. Content enrichment
   Interactive audio and video playback – that change according to the user’s choices and actions – contributes to enriching our customer’s content.
3. Reduced development time
   Our technology and know-how, which has been used in actual product development for many years, and has been repeatedly improved, enables us to shorten application development time and reduce costs.

CRIWARE is an audio and video technology that offers many benefits that can greatly increase the efficiency of game development, but here we will focus on smartphone game development and introduce the following three points.

Benefit 1: A vast amount of audio data can be freely combined!

Detailed sound adjustments are required when playing audio in games. For example, the volume of the background music may need to be lowered when a character is speaking, or the maximum number of characters that can be heard at once should be controlled. Making these types of adjustments for each sound can be very cumbersome and time-consuming.

CRIWARE is used as an editing software to efficiently manage and configure the many audio assets. CRIWARE makes it easy to implement sound controls that would normally be done programmatically and to easily affect groups of audio assets rather than each individual sound when needed.

Benefit 2: Audio latency on smartphones is solved! Create rhythm games that are fun to play!

Smartphone devices exhibit audio latency, which corresponds to the lag between the time a command to play a sound is given and when that sound actually plays. This is a serious problem for rhythm games, as it can cause the timing of the music and the marks to become out of sync. To complicate matters, the latency varies depending on the smartphone model used, with some having a large delay and others having a smaller one, so it is necessary to perform optimal corrections for each individual model.

As a countermeasure, CRIWARE provides an ‘audio playback delay estimation function’. CRIWARE automatically performs the best possible correction for each model. Therefore, there is no need to tweak the code for each model. CRIWARE allows to efficiently create rhythm games that can be comfortably played on any device.

3- Make your game even more exciting! Interactive audio behaviours can be efficiently implemented.

Sounds can change according to the user’s actions, such as combo sound effects getting more and more exciting as a combo is performed by the player. This makes real-time battles more exciting and the game more immersive. However, there is a lot of work involved in the implementation of the typical combo effect, as it is the result of repeated adjustments to the timing of the sound switching, the seamless connection of the sounds, and the careful balance of their volumes.

CRIWARE is useful here too! You can easily edit sound effects so that they switch naturally at the optimal timing depending on the battle situation. It is also easy to check the sound settings. Normally, sound data created by a sound designer is passed to a programmer, who then incorporates the data into the application and checks the sound, but with CRIWARE, once the sound is created, it can be immediately previewed within the editing software. Sound production – which often requires repeated detailed listening tests – becomes very efficient with CRIWARE!

CRI’s core competency is advanced digital signal processing. Our technology maintains the high quality of digital audio and video assets, reduces their size, and provides playback features optimized for the target platforms.

In addition, most of the codecs (encoding and decoding technologies) used to compress and decompress video, audio, and other files are proprietary technologies developed by CRI. CRI’s engineers thoroughly research and investigate the characteristics of various codecs, then make unique functional enhancements and adjustments for each piece of hardware, and offer them as “CRIWARE” along with a set of easy-to-use APIs.

The CRI group consists of the company, one domestic subsidiary, and two overseas subsidiaries.

It is mainly engaged in the licensing and sale of software products under the brands “CRIWARE” and “OPTPiX”. CRI also offers contract development, sound production, and other services related to its technology licenses. An overview of each subsidiary is given below.

(Domestic subsidiary)

• TwoFive Co., Ltd. (Shibuya-ku, Tokyo)
  Main business: Sound production (lyrics, composition, arrangement, recording, audio processing and editing, etc.), CD production and sales, recording studio management, event planning and management, etc.

(Overseas subsidiary)

• CRI Middleware China Co., Ltd.
  Main business: Providing licenses and technical support for “CRIWARE”.
• CRI Middleware, Inc. (California, USA)
  Main business: Licensing of “CRIWARE”