Toshihiro Nagoshi, the creator of the acclaimed Yakuza series is in the final stages of leaving Sega and signing a contract with Chinese video game giant, NetEase. According to a report by Bloomberg, Nagoshi “hasn’t signed a final contract and his duties have yet to be finalized” but is expected to create his own team and develop new games.
Nagoshi has been with Sega for almost 32 years and worked on everything from Ryu Ga Gotoku to F-Zero GX, Virtua Fighter, and Daytona. This departure doesn’t come as too much of a surprise though, as he stepped down from his role as Sega’s CCO at the start of the year. At the time Sega said that Nagoshi stepped down from the role as he wanted to be more on the creative side of things rather than making managerial decisions. The transition was completed as of April 1, 2021, along with a number of other structural changes Sega had been planning to implement over the year.
While at the time it seemed like Nagoshi’s decision was made so that he could focus more on the Ryu Ga Gotoku series and its spin offs, an interview he gave in later in March revealed that he wanted to branch out to different projects. “The Ryu Ga Gotoku team members, they’ve only really worked on the Yakuza series,” he explained. “But I think it would be a waste if these really talented team members that we have aren’t able to use all of their skills to their full potential."
We won’t really know if this series of events was put into motion by Nagoshi with the goal of ultimately leaving the company, or if it’s all mere coincidence. No official statement by Nagoshi, Sega, or NetEase has been made as of yet.
As Bloomberg reports, this is a major get for for NetEase, whose reach is probably only shadowed by fellow chinese video game company, Tencent. Both companies have been on a spree of acquiring video game, comic, and animation related assets over the last few years in a bid to fill out their content libraries.