Trade legend Keiji Inafune left Stage-5 final 12 months, the Fantasy Life and Professor Layton developer has revealed.
In a brand new entry on the Stage-5 “5-Star Workshop Devlog”, Stage-5 CEO Akihiro Hino describes the “surprising problem” confronted by upcoming RPG Fantasy Life i: The Woman Who Steals Time, which is about for a Might launch after having suffered quite a few delays.
Hino says that Inafune, who was serving as a producer on the challenge, left Stage-5 “in mid-2024”, inflicting the studio to “reassess and restructure the challenge”. Inafune’s departure, along with “harsh evaluations” from early playtesters, led Stage-5 to undertake a “full overhaul” of Fantasy Life i.
Hino goes on to say that the additions prompted by Inafune’s departure and the suggestions, together with “parkour-style actions” and “open-world exploration”, precipitated testers to offer the sport “excessive reward”, reminding Hino and the workforce of the “true pleasure in making a large-scale recreation”.
When you want a refresher, Keiji Inafune labored with Capcom from the late 80s by way of to 2010, serving to to create enduring franchises like Mega Man, Useless Rising, and Onimusha, amongst others.
He left Capcom in 2010 and created Comcept, the studio that may go on to launch the much-maligned Mighty No. 9, in addition to video games like Soul Sacrifice and ReCore.
Comcept was acquired by Stage-5 in 2017, offering growth help on Stage-5 video games like Megaton Musashi in addition to spearheading the event of the aforementioned Fantasy Life i: The Woman Who Steals Time.
It isn’t clear what Inafune will do subsequent; he hasn’t made any type of official announcement concerning his departure. He might, nonetheless, take the route adopted by a few of his colleagues and begin up his personal studio, maybe with backing from an organization like NetEase (though which may be changing into harder).
In any case, Fantasy Life i: The Woman Who Steals Time is about for launch on PC, PlayStation, Xbox Sequence X|S, and Nintendo Change on Might twenty first.