Launching the Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game: a new axis of IP revenue in paper cards (1999)

Konami’s lightness in carrying IP outside its core business

The core of this decision was that Konami left its main battlefield of video-game software and monetised its IP in an entirely different medium — paper cards. Stepping into the “Carddass” market that Bandai had commercialised first, as an official card game backed by its relationship with Shueisha, the original work’s publisher, showed a lightness that does not cling to the core business of a game maker. Just as with the 1985 move from the arcade to the home console, Konami used this entry to sharpen one more degree its character as a company that carries IP without fixating on any particular medium.

That said, primary sources showing who inside the company drove this decision, and how far, are scarce for 1999, and the decision-making process itself is still not fully documented today. Even so, the path by which a small new business in paper cards grew, over a quarter of a century, into one of the world’s largest trading-card-game brands — digital versions included — is the earliest embodiment of Konami’s management style of monetising a hit IP repeatedly, across the walls between media.