Business Legend Keiji Inafune Left Stage-5 Final 12 months Avid gamers Area

Business 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 “sudden problem” confronted by upcoming RPG Fantasy Life i: The Woman Who Steals Time, which is about for a Could launch after having suffered quite a few delays.

Hino says that Inafune, who was serving as a producer on the undertaking, left Stage-5 “in mid-2024”, inflicting the studio to “reassess and restructure the undertaking”. 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”, brought about testers to provide the sport “excessive reward”, reminding Hino and the group of the “true pleasure in making a large-scale recreation”.

In the event you want a refresher, Keiji Inafune labored with Capcom from the late 80s by means 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 will 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 improvement 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 is not clear what Inafune will do subsequent; he hasn’t made any form of official announcement concerning his departure. He may, 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 turning into tougher).

In any case, Fantasy Life i: The Woman Who Steals Time is about for launch on PC, PlayStation, Xbox Collection X|S, and Nintendo Swap on Could twenty first.