Clease may be holding its second largest recruit of the year after Boulapoire. As an article by Bloomberg signed Takashi Mochizuki, a specialist in Japanese business, Nenetse would be in advanced discussion with Toshihiri Nagoshi, emblematic veteran of Sega and creative director of the yakuza franchise.
Symbol of the more and more net offensive as Chinese giants like Tencent and Netease lead to a place on the international multi-platform video game market, Negotiations between Netease and Toshihiri Nagoshi would be about to succeed. According to sources close to the file, Sega’s veteran would be placed at the head of his own development team at Netease. Sega and Netease did not comment on the situation, but there is no reason to think that this departure would preclude the end of a franchise on which Sega now bets doubly with one side yakuza Who has just operated a successful turn to the turn in turn by turn and the other Judgment who recovers the torch of the Beat’em Up action.
If we can see this recruitment as a sign of the power of seduction of Netease, it must be remembered that Toshihiri Nagoshi had strangely downgraded into the hierarchy of SEGA at the beginning of the year, losing his place among the leaders of the group and his position of CCO. (Head of Creation) to become Simple Creative Director. Before being known as the strong man of the franchise Yakuza , the 56-year-old veteran had started on such famous arcade games as Virtua Racing and Daytona USA . It will include producer and director of the franchise Super Monkey Ball or producer of F-Zero GX and SPIKEOUT , before the advent of a certain DOJIMA dragon in 2005. A saga that will only rarely leave the bedside despite the release of Binary Domain , new license remained without continuation, in 2012.
The Bloomberg article also mentions that Tencent would be about to acquire a Japanese studio. The Chinese giant has already invested in PlatinumGames, Marvelous or Bokeh Game Studio, the independent studio founded by Keiichiro Toyama and other former Japan Studio. For its part, Netease has already opened its own Japanese studio to develop on consoles and recruited a veteran from Bandai Namco, Tetsuya Akatsuka, to lead the studio. For Clease, these investments in Japan are added to the big shots made with Western studios, especially the $ 100 million for the development of Bungie or Quantic Dream financing in its multi-platform strategy.
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