Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada joins SNK to found new video game studio

Katsuhiro Harada may have left Tekken, but he’s set up his own studio called VS Studio at SNK, no doubt to work on a new fighting game.

Last December, Tekken series director and producer Katsuhiro Harada announced his departure from both the series and publisher Bandai Namco, marking the end of a 31 year tenure at the company.

This was unsurprising, as Harada had suggested he’d retire following the release of Tekken 8, but it was unclear if he was quitting the video game business entirely or if he would be taking up a new position elsewhere.

It turns out he’s forming his very own studio, but the real surprise is that he’s collaborating with SNK, the company responsible for the Fatal Fury and The King Of Fighters fighting game franchises.

The new studio is dubbed VS Studio and with SNK investing in its founding, it’s described as a new subsidiary for the company; one that will collaborate with SNK on ‘game software development to further strengthen their development capabilities.’

A statement from Harada reads, ‘We will combine technology, sensibility, and world-class expertise to pursue the ultimate. From a free, open, and spacious environment, we will generate new ideas and create memorable games.’

SNK’s Yasuyuki Oda, producer on The King Of Fighters 15 and Fatal Fury: City Of The Wolves, welcomed Harada in a video message: ‘I am extremely proud to welcome Mr. Katsuhiro Harada, who has been a long-time friend and a worthy rival to us, into our group. We’ve long discussed the hypothetical scenario of working together, and now that dream has become a reality.’

None of this gives any real indication of what sort of games VS Studio will work on but given the name and Harada’s Tekken history, it’s pretty obvious the studio’s first project will be a fighting game of some kind.

The real question is how involved SNK will actually be. As a reminder, SNK shut down in 2001 and the SNK of today is an entirely different company, that bought the name and its associated franchises.

It’s also a subsidiary of the Misk Foundation, a Saudi Arabian organisation owned by the country’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. That’s caused controversy because of the Saudi Arabian government’s accusations of human rights violations, but also because of interference with the making of the games.

The new Fatal Fury game, for instance, added real world celebrities – footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and DJ Salvatore Ganacci – as playable characters, both of who are favourites of Mohammed bin Salman.

That didn’t sit well with fans and, combined with Fatal Fury being a niche series to begin with, the game proved a sales flop at launch.

Harada is the latest high-profile Japanese game developer to get his own studio in unexpected circumstances, but we can only hope he has a better time with it than some other examples.

Both No More Heroes creator Goichi ‘Suda51’ Suda and Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi have studios under Chinese company NetEase, which was meant to help fund their new projects.

However, a Bloomberg report from last year stated that NetEase would no longer be funding its Japanese studios once their latest projects wrap up.

Suda51 was able to get Romeo Is A Dead Man out the door, but Nagoshi’s Gang Of Dragon (which was only announced at The Game Awards in December) may not even release, with the studio reportedly facing closure.

It wouldn’t be surprising as, in 2024, NetEase shut down another Japanese developer it owned, Ouka Studios, the very day it launched Visions Of Mana.

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