Katsuhiro Harada and SNK discuss their bold ambitions to ‘revive Japan’s golden era’

At a time when the games industry feels overwhelmed with bad news, former Tekken boss Katsuhiro Harada’s new SNK studio almost feels like a throwback.

Harada formed VS Studio with the Saudi-owned games publisher earlier this year, and was soon followed by some of his most senior former colleagues.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, SNK – the Japanese gaming arm of a state that just completed a $55 billion acquisition of Electronic Arts – has some pretty big expectations for what the veteran fighting game producer can achieve under its banner. And it seems those ambitions could extend to snapping up more big-name talent down the line.

During a visit to VS Studio’s freshly furnished office in Tokyo, Japan, SNK’s equally box-fresh chief publishing officer, Ozan Kocoglu, told VGC his ambition was to help Harada build something that could potentially “change the face of the industry”, while lending his experience from decades at Bandai Namco to improve SNK’s own games.

For Harada, the partnership represents an opportunity to work at a games publisher which, according to him, has a top-to-bottom understanding of what it takes to make great video games.

“From my understanding, at the major game development companies in Japan, management people don’t play their in-house development games at all, not even prototypes, not even the finalized games,” he claimed. “I’m not criticizing that it’s bad or that it’s good… I just wanted to also emphasize that this group, the SNK group, is an exception.”

Read on for my full interview with Harada and Kocoglu, in which they discuss VS Studio’s vision, plans for the future, and lessons learned from Fatal Fury.

In today’s industry climate, we’re more used to hearing about studios closing than opening. In a tough time for AAA games, why does VS Studio represent an opportunity?

سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/features/interviews/katsuhiro-harada-and-snk-discuss-their-bold-ambitions-to-revive-japans-golden-era/