Visions of Mana director Kenji Ozawa has announced that he's founded his own studio by the name of Studio Sasanqua.
As spotted by Automaton Media, the website for Studio Sasanqua went live yesterday, along with a teaser trailer (which is entirely in Japanese) announcing the studio and its name. The studio will apparently begin by working on smaller-scale projects before transitioning to larger games.
In case you need a reminder, Ozawa left his previous employer, Visions of Mana developer Ouka Studios, back in December. His departure came after the studio reportedly laid off a large amount of its employees on the day of the game's release.
Speaking to Automaton, Ozawa said that he was moved to start Studio Sasanqua because he frequently saw managers not taking responsibility for failed projects. Ozawa believes that "management needs to protect creators", and that seems to be what he's intending to do with Studio Sasanqua.
According to Automaton, Ozawa will begin by developing small-scale games in Unreal Engine, but eventually, the goal is to transition to "full-blown, original PC/console games" (that's Automaton's wording, not Ozawa's).
You can check out the brief teaser trailer for Studio Sasanqua right here. Again, be aware that the whole trailer is in Japanese, and there aren't any English subtitles, so you might have to do a little interpretation if you don't speak the language.
Ozawa's previous employer Ouka is just one NetEase-funded studio to be hit with layoffs, project cancellations, or outright closures in recent months.
Others include Worlds Untold, the studio run by BioWare veteran Mac Walters, as well as Just Cause creator Christofer Sundberg's Liquid Swords. Neither studio has released, or even properly announced, its first game yet.
NetEase also recently closed down the Seattle studio responsible for working on Marvel Rivals, despite the fact that the game has attracted 40 million registered users since launching in December. Sadly, it seems NetEase isn't quite the industry veteran haven it seemed a year or two ago.
