Longtime Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada is back, and this time around he’s in full control, leading a Tokyo-based team called VS Studio. Harada left Bandai Namco in December after 30 years directing and serving as the hair-gelled, always-shady face of the Tekken franchise, and his departure came as a surprise to the fighting game community. While Harada is in charge of the vision and output at VS Studio, it’s a subsidiary of SNK Corporation, Bandai’s market rival in the world of fighting games. Scandalous, surely.
Harada announced the new studio with a short video discussing how he landed at SNK and laying out his vague creative intentions. Essentially, he said he wants to focus on making great games with trusted colleagues, and it sounds like VS Studio is still in its infancy, as he encouraged interested developers to apply to work there. In a press release, Harada said the studio’s philosophy is, “beyond tradition, crafted to perfection,” and “VS” stands for a number of ideas, including Visionary Standard, Volition Shift and Vanguard Spirit.
“We will combine technology, sensibility and world-class expertise to pursue the ultimate,” Harada said. “From a free, open and spacious environment, we will generate new ideas and create memorable games.”
Longtime SNK developer Yasuyuki Oda added, “we’ve long discussed the hypothetical scenario of working together and now that dream has become a reality. To be honest, nothing has been decided yet, but I have no doubt that things will become even more exciting than ever before.”
SNK is a Japanese developer best known for the fighting franchises Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown and The King of Fighters, while Bandai has Tekken and Soulcalibur, plus a vast library of other popular titles in various genres. Bandai is certainly the whale in this comparison, but SNK has financial stability through the Electronic Gaming Development Company, a non-profit run by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammad bin Salman. Saudi investment in video game companies and esports tournaments is a major concern among players and developers worldwide, considering bin Salman’s abysmal and ever-growing record of human rights abuses.
The EGDC bought SNK in 2022. It also recently acquired a 5 percent stake in Capcom. And the crown prince’s Private Investment Fund has financial interest in a number of other global game studios, including Nintendo, Niantic, EA and Take-Two. The PIF and its gaming arm, Savvy Games Group, is largely responsible for the implosion of Embracer Group in 2023, after it backed out of a $2 billion investment deal at the last minute. Embracer’s collapse kicked off massive waves of studio closures and layoffs that are still rippling across the industry today.
Meanwhile, Harada is just out here trying to make awesome fighting games, you know? At least, that’s probably what he’ll be working on at VS Studio, but it’s still early days for his new team under SNK.