Exclusive: Former Capcom Producer Behind Resident Evil and Killer 7 Opens Up About His New Studio

ign.com:

Following Yakuza series creator Toshihiro Nagoshi and No More Heroes creator Goichi Suda, popularly known as "Suda51," Capcom veteran Hiroyuki Kobayashi announced his move to NetEase Games back in August this year. Today, NetEase revealed Kobayashi's new studio as GPTRACK50, located in Osaka. At Capcom, Kobayashi worked as the producer on the Resident Evil series as well as Devil May Cry.

“I was at Capcom for 27 years. During my time, the company became a lot bigger and a lot of new staff came in,” Kobayashi told IGN in an exclusive interview.

“I worked on a wide array of titles at Capcom, but I wanted a new challenge,” he explained. “Of course, it’s not like Capcom didn’t allow me to try out new things, but now that the company is a lot bigger, things are different from the way they were when I joined the company as a freshman back in 1995. Everything now needs to be approved and things just take more time to get greenlit. I’m the kind of creator that wants to be able to deliver a new experience while it still feels fresh, and I had been thinking of creating my own studio to make that possible.”

Kobayashi had heard that major Chinese publisher and developer NetEase Games gives its studios a lot of creative freedom. After joining the company, he feels relieved to have the liberty to be able to pursue his ideas without having to take too much time to explain himself.

While he said it is too early to go into detail, Kobayashi assured us that GPTRACK50’s first game will be something in line with the action games he has worked on in the past.

“After making action games at Capcom for so many years, it would be a bit weird if I was now making an adventure game or a dating sim, wouldn’t it?” he joked. “That being said, I don’t want