Kohei Ikeda, game director on Tekken 7 and 8, has joined Katsuhiro Harada's SNK-backed VS Studio, putting the three men who ran Tekken 7 under one roof. The response is less unanimous than it looks.
Tekken 8 game director Kohei Ikeda has left Bandai Namco after 20 years, the third series lead to exit in roughly nine months after Katsuhiro Harada. We unpack his career, what his statement does and doesn't say, the backdrop of fan backlash, and whether he'll reunite with Harada at VS Studio SNK.
Katsuhiro Harada launched VS Studio under SNK. Shinji Mikami's Unbound was absorbed by Korea's SHIFT UP. Daisuke Taka burned through his savings to go solo. As Japan's most celebrated game creators strike out on their own, the capital keeping them afloat is overwhelmingly Saudi and Korean. Here's why Japan's own giants can't fund their stars, and why foreign money can.
Four months after exiting Bandai Namco, Tekken series director Katsuhiro Harada has launched VS Studio SNK, with his longtime rival SNK as parent company but explicitly not as a wholly owned subsidiary. We look at the 90s-spirited mission, the Yonemori and Oda reunion, and the divided fighting game community reaction, including the Saudi ownership question r/Fighters can't stop debating.