ESA Welcomes Trion and XSEED

Just when you thought everyone was jumping ship, the Entertainment Software Association welcomes two new companies to its ranks.

Trion World Network, Inc. isn’t familiar to most gamers – because they haven’t actually put out any games yet. The company is working on “server-based games and original entertainment” and made a couple of headlines last year for raising $70 million for these mysterious titles.

XSEED Games is way easier to spot. Who could forget the publishers that put Wild Arms and Valhalla Knights into the hands of strategy RPG-starved handheld gamers?

Last year, the ESA seemed to be shrinking by the minute as LucasArts, Crave, NCsoft, Activision, id Software all left the associations possibly over shrinking E3 revenues. In the last few months, however, they seemed to have rallied by scooping up publishers like SouthPeak and Natsume.

Think of corporate associations like giant roller coasters – you’re up, then you’re down, then you’re back up again and possibly doing one of those loopty-loops. Isn’t business fun?