Yakuza creator announces new NetEase studio – will continue to focus on Japanese games

metro.co.uk:

Toshihiro Nagoshi wants his new studio to take a leaf out of Nintendo’s book when it comes to quality and secrecy.

In October, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, which is responsible for Sega’s Yakuza series, announced a major shift in management, with the studio’s general director Toshihiro Nagoshi leaving it and Sega entirely.

At the time, it was rumoured he would be joining Chinese company NetEase and now he has confirmed that is precisely the case. He even unveiled his new studio, simply named Nagoshi Studio.

As was already known, Nagoshi has taken Yakuza series producer Daisuke Sato with him, but the website also confirms that they are joined by seven other former Sega employees: artists Kazuki Hosokawa and Toshihiro Ando, programmer Koji Tokieda, game designer Masao Shirosaki, engineer Mitsunori Fujimoto, artist Naoki Someya, and director Taichi Ushioda.

In an interview with Japanese outlet Famitsu, Nagoshi explains that he left Sega because he didn’t want to be doing the same thing over and over again. Plus, after being in a producer and director role for so long, he wanted to be closer to game development again.

He also confirmed that his studio will be focused on creating ‘highly dramatic’ Japanese games, which suggests that he won’t be veering too far from his work on the likes of Yakuza and Judgment.

‘We’re Japanese, and we’re a Japanese studio, so naturally the market that we understand the most is Japan,’ says Nagoshi (as translated by VGC). ‘We’ve been desperately trying to find a methodology that would allow us to create something that would be accepted around the world while keeping our focus on Japan. However, I don’t think I have been able to give a complete answer to this question until now.

‘In order to find the answer,