Nintendo Acquires Stake In Panasonic’s PUX For New Software Engine

PUX is a software development kit used in Nintendo games like Brain Age. The package includes a set of video codecs to encode movies, 2D to 3D conversion software, and various recognition tools for speech, handwriting, face, objects, and gestures. Brain Age used speech recognition and the kanji recognition tools.

Nintendo will take a 27% stake in PUX. Panasonic still holds the majority of shares with 51% and another 21% are public. The PUX software package has been used for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS games. Nintendo will combine their game development knowhow with PUX’s software development knowhow to create a new software engine and application software.

Nintendo also fully acquired Mobiclip, now known as Nintendo European Research & Development, back in 2011. Mobiclip is a video codec used for many 3DS and Wii games. This division also helped develop the Wii U Internet Browser.