Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada is back with his own studio under SNK

Longtime Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada is back, and this time he’s in full control, leading a Tokyo-based team called VS Studio. Harada left Bandai Namco in December after 30 years of leading and always being the dark face of the Tekken franchise, and his departure came as a surprise to the fighting game community. Although Harada is in charge of the vision and production of VS Studio, it is a subsidiary of SNK Corporation, Bandai’s rival in the world of fighting games. Scandalous, surely.

Harada announced the new studio with a short video explaining how he landed at SNK and laying out his vague creative intentions. Essentially, he said he wanted to focus on creating quality games with trusted colleagues, and it appears 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” represents a number of ideas, including Visionary Standard, Volition Shift, and Vanguard Spirit.

“We will combine world-class technology, sensitivity and expertise to achieve the ultimate,” Harada said. “From a free, open and spacious environment, we will generate new ideas and create memorable games.”

Yasuyuki Oda, long-time developer of SNK, added: “We have discussed at length the hypothetical scenario of working together and now this dream has come true. To be honest, nothing has been decided yet, but I am confident that things will become even more exciting than ever.”

SNK is a Japanese developer best known for the fighting franchises Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, and The King of Fighters, while Bandai offers Tekken and Soulcalibur, as well as an extensive library of other popular titles in various genres. Bandai is certainly the whale in this comparison, but SNK enjoys financial stability thanks to the Electronic Gaming Development Company, a non-profit organization headed by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Saudi investments in video game companies and esports tournaments are a major concern among gamers and developers around the world, given Bin Salman’s appalling and ever-increasing record of human rights abuses.

EGDC purchased SNK in 2022. It also recently acquired a 5% stake in Capcom. And the crown prince’s private investment fund has financial interests in a number of other global game studios, including Nintendo, Niantic, EA and Take-Two. The PIF and its games arm, Savvy Games Group, are largely responsible for the implosion of the Embracer group in 2023, after abandoning a $2 billion investment deal at the last minute. Embracer’s collapse triggered massive waves of studio closures and layoffs that still reverberate through the industry today.

Meanwhile, Harada is just 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.