Yakuza Creator Founds New Studio Under NetEase

gamerant.com:

As acquisitions continue to change the face of the video game industry, one of the most polarizing stories from 2021 was the departure of Sega's Toshihiro Nagoshi after 30 years with the company to work for Chinese tech company NetEase. This came only six months after Nagoshi was promoted to Sega's creative director role, overseeing all the company's major video game output after spending years creating titles within the Yakuza and Super Monkey Ball franchises. Now, new evidence suggests that the Yakuza creator has gone on to found his own studio within NetEase.

Nagoshi joined Sega in the late 80s and worked with legendary game designer Yu Suzuki on iconic titles such as Daytona USA and Shenmue before eventually creating his own series, Super Monkey Ball, in 2003, shortly after Sega became a third-party publisher. Following this, Nagoshi would work on F-Zero GX before creating the Yakuza series for the PlayStation 2 in an attempt to compete with bigger western games such as Grand Theft Auto. After the series became a big hit, Nagoshi founded Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio in 2011 and directed games such as Binary Domain, the Judgment series, and multiple entries in the Yakuza series until his departure from Sega in October 2021.

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Many fans were shocked by the announcement of Nagoshi's departure from Sega last year, especially given the newfound popularity of the Yakuza franchise in the west after years of attempts at finding an audience outside of Japan. Regardless, many outlets reported that the purpose of Nagoshi's departure was to found a new studio within NetEase, a company that has invested heavily in developers such as Bungie and Quantic Dream,