Japan’s Official Gazette Kanpo has confirmed, via its list of the company’s dissolution, that developer Nigoshi Studio has closed. The studio was founded back in 2021 by Yakuza/Like A Dragon creator Toshihiro Nagoshi following his departure from SEGA and RGG Studios that same year, with backing from Chinese publisher NetEase to found the new studio. They announced their first title, Gang of Dragon, back in December; it was “deep into development.”
The action title that had some similarities to the developer’s previous series was set to star South Korean-American actor Ma Dong-seok, perhaps best known in the West for roles in Train to Busan and Marvel’s Eternals. NetEase decided to pull funding for the game following the realization that developer Nagoshi Studios needed an additional ¥7 billion ($44.4 million) of funding to reach the finish line on the project.
Nagoshi Studios isn’t exactly one-off either, as they are the latest to close as a result of NetEase’s decision to scale back on international game development operations. This decision follows years of the company investing heavily outside China, often in direct competition with another Chinese publisher, Tencent. As a result, several studios have seen closure, including Bad Brain Game studios, Fantastic Pixel Castle, and T-Minus.
Another studio that closed during all this, Ouka Studio in Tokyo, might be more familiar to players. The company had just released its well-received new entry in the Mana series, Visions of Mana, prior to the decision to shelve them. Goichi Suda’s studio, Grasshopper Manufacture, released Romeo is a Dead Man earlier this year without funding from NetEase, and has now completely split with the publisher, while Hiroyuki Kobayashi’s GPTRACK50 recieved initial funding for their recently released Stupid Never Dies but were forced to find a worldwide co-publisher in SEGA following NetEase’s scaling back of investments.
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