March 12, 2026
West Japan Railway Company
JP UNIVERSE Inc.
JR-WEST and JP UNIVERSE Inc. Form
Strategic Alliance
Creating new immersive experiences through regional revitalization with RYUGU NATION
West Japan Railway Company (Headquarters: Kita-ku, Osaka; President: Shoji Kurasaka; hereinafter “JR-WEST”) and JP UNIVERSE Inc. (Headquarters: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Hajime Tabata; hereinafter “JP UNIVERSE”) announce that they have entered into a strategic alliance to collaborate with the RPG-based platform “RYUGU NATION.” This partnership aims to create new experiential value in the XR (Cross Reality) field, focusing on solving social issues such as regional revitalization.
Boundaries to a new world disappear
ー A co-creation platform where you become the value of the region ー
JR-WEST has been working on the construction of “Virtual Stations” as an attempt to reproduce and expand their stations—which possess diverse real-world social roles and functions—into a virtual space. Virtual Stations have received high praise from many customers both in Japan and overseas, with a cumulative total of over 50 million visitors across the series. At Virtual Stations, we are promoting the creation of new value through a co-creative approach, including links with the real world and UGC (User Generated Content).
On the other hand, real-world regional communities are facing complex challenges such as a declining birthrate, aging population, population outflow, economic stagnation, and difficulties in maintaining administrative services. These issues are becoming difficult to solve through traditional government-led initiatives or independent corporate efforts alone. What is needed now is a “co-creation mechanism” where residents, companies, and local governments work together and remain continuously involved.
In light of this, JR-WEST and JP UNIVERSE will launch a social impact initiative centered on the RPG platform RYUGU NATION. Based on the concept of “An Alternate Japan,” RYUGU NATION is a platform that builds spaces set in Japan’s 47 actual prefectures, allowing users to change and expand the worlds, items, and events within them. In this project, we aim to create an economic zone where gaming and reality are connected, promote regional economies through tourism resources and local products using games as a hook, and realize new value creation through co-creation involving various stakeholders such as users, companies, and local governments.
Thoughts on the Strategic Alliance
This strategic alliance demonstrates the determination of both companies to take a “co-creative” approach to solving social issues, primarily those facing Japan’s rural areas, from both real and virtual perspectives. Both companies share a strong ambition to address regional revitalization challenges and create new value to solve them. We aim to achieve this through “co-creation” involving everyone, utilizing XR and technology.
JR-WEST’s physical infrastructure, including its railway business and its extensive connections with local governments and companies, and JP UNIVERSE’s ability to create game worlds and mechanisms that encourage UGC in the virtual field, are in a mutually enhancing relationship toward the creation of new value. By combining the strengths of both companies, we aim to build innovative customer experiences where the real and virtual worlds connect, as well as a co-creative platform where anyone can participate, realizing a new form of regional revitalization.
The Future Envisioned Through the Partnership
① A Future Where Daily Life and the Extraordinary Merge
By interconnecting the real world and the game (virtual), we aim to eliminate the boundaries between daily life and entertainment through gamification technology, achieving an unprecedented customer experience.
② A Future Where Users and Businesses Co-create
Rather than a one-way provision of services, we will utilize “UGC” expertise to create together, aiming to establish a platform where user creativity and corporate business activities fuse to generate new value.
③ A Future Where Various Stakeholders Revitalize Regions
By developing this into a business platform useful to all social stakeholders—including companies, local governments, and individuals—we aim to achieve the society-wide co-creation advocated by “Regional Revitalization 2.0” and strive for sustainable development.
This initiative aims to realize new value creation by revitalizing regions through a “co-creative” approach, using games as a hook for collaboration with various stakeholders. As the first step, “RYUGU NATION Tottori,” based on Tottori Prefecture, is scheduled to launch within 2026. Details will be announced in future press releases, so please stay tuned.
Reference: About RYUGU NATION
“RYUGU NATION” is a creative and economic platform based on an RPG game world. It is being developed by JP UNIVERSE Inc. to realize the “Japan Metaverse Economic Zone” concept, which is supported by leading Japanese companies. With the concept of “Bringing Japan to the World,” this is an ambitious service that creates an economic zone integrating the creator economy and corporate promotion within an RPG space themed after Japanese mythology. RYUGU NATION is being developed for Asian and global markets while building a mutual network with other creative platforms through the proprietary middleware “OwnWorld.” A beta version is scheduled for release in 2026.