Ninja Gaiden and Dynasty Warriors studio Koei Tecmo has announced that it has appointed a new CEO, who's due to take office in April. He'll replace one of the company's co-founders in the position.
According to an announcement on the official Koei Tecmo site (via Game Developer), Hisashi Koinuma will become Koei Tecmo's new CEO on April 1st. He's currently serving as a representative director and executive VP for Koei Tecmo Games.
Koinuma will replace outgoing CEO Yoichi Erikawa, who's also one of the company's co-founders alongside his wife Keiko. Yoichi will become the representative director for Koei Tecmo Games, as well as its chairman, while Keiko will become the representative director and president of a new corporate finance division.
Much like recent moves at PlayStation, this Koei Tecmo leadership shake-up means the company will go from essentially having two leaders to having a sole head.
As Game Developer points out, it's currently understood that Koei Tecmo won't be altering its strategy significantly as a result of this change, so it's unlikely that Koinuma's appointment will have any impact on upcoming games like Ninja Gaiden 4.
If you're not familiar with Koei Tecmo's work, the studio is best known for franchises like historical hack-and-slash series Dynasty Warriors and, uh, ninja-themed hack-and-slash series Ninja Gaiden.
Other major Koei Tecmo efforts include Dead or Alive, the Atelier series of JRPGs, and strategy sims like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's Ambition, as well as work on games in franchises like Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy.
Right now, the studio is hard at work on Ninja Gaiden 4, which subsidiary Team Ninja is co-developing alongside Bayonetta and The Wonderful 101's PlatinumGames.
Koei Tecmo is also gearing up for the PC release of Rise of the Ronin, its historical open-world actioner set during the turbulent Bakumatsu period of Japanese history.
