Yes, that’s Vince’s aborted title. I needed to use it somewhere.

So. I’ve not yet finished transcribing the interview, but for those of you who downloaded the .mp3 — recall that question that Brandon asked Ben Herman & Co., regarding Playmore‘s future now that they’ve got back the rights to the SNK name?

I wondered, based on what Mr. Herman told me earlier, whether Playmore intended to revert their name to SNK since they’ve now got the opportunity. When Brandon asked (in my absence), they were… immediately and suspiciously quiet. They weren’t allowed to comment.

As it turns out, Playmore remains Playmore. It’s Sun who’s now become SNK NeoGeo (to match the US, Korea, and Hong Kong branches) — the Sun who publishes all of Playmore’s games; the Sun who manages all of the NeoGeo Land arcade centers; the Sun who recently absorbed Brezza (as I had guessed), making them an in-house team; the Sun who, as a result, was now responsible for developing most of the material that they were publishing.

Sun is Playmore’s main practical division. They handle pretty much everything. And now they’re SNK again. Take a look. If you recall, a year ago the Playmore group was a perplexing web of names. I devoted several entries, just trying to work out what was where. You had Playmore at the top, and then Sun, Brezza, and Noise Factory jointed off of them on the one end. SNK NeoGeo Korea, USA, and Hong Kong stretched out in the other direction. Megaking was more closely involved; the Korean branch of the company was a joint venture between them and Playmore. Evoga and Uno Technology also seemed pretty closely tied into things; it was hard to sort out who had a share in what.

Now, Brezza and Sun are one unit; Sun is now SNK. We’ve got two US branches (arcade and consumer). Aside from Noise Factory and Playmore prime (as it were), everything’s SNK again.

So. Yeah. Some more confirmation for my intuition.

I’m going to go finish that transcription, now. Seems about time.