End of the year is the time to talk about our expectations for the coming year. Our wishes, our goals, and everything we hope to achieve. It’s a tradition, it’s something we all do to some extent, and it’s normal. One year ends. It’s normal to feel like it’s a moment of reset and starting over with a new year.
Japan is no different in that sense. They also make their New Year’s resolutions, even when we talk about Japanese creators in the video game industry. The difference is that they don’t just do it privately. Because the 4gamer magazine takes care of collecting every year the comments of dozens of Japanese creatives about what they have enjoyed the most in 2023 and what they expect for 2024. Including their own projects. And this year, more than one has let slip some exciting information.
Eiji Ishida, who works at Atlus and is particularly known for being the mastermind behind the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei franchise, has hinted that they are already working on a new game. Something that Suda51 has also done, stating that they are working on another game in addition to Shadows of the Damned Remastered, which will be released in 2024. And Kotaro Uchikoshi, creator of AI: The Somnium Files and the Zero Escape trilogy, true to his style, has declared that he is making a very crazy game that will go down in history.
They are not the only ones working hard. On the other hand, we have Hiroyuki Kobayashi. You may not recognize his name or his studio, GPTRACK50, but he has been involved in major Capcom franchises such as Dragon’s Dogma, Resident Evil, and Devil May Cry. And he has confirmed that he is working on an action RPG as only possible with the team he has assembled. Similarly, Yukinori Kitajima, from Synthese, a studio that has written scripts for games like Final Fantasy, has confirmed that a very ambitious title that he has been wanting to talk about for a long time will finally be announced this year.
To top it off, another great news is something we were expecting, but that doesn’t make us any less happy. Keiichiro Toyama, from Bokeh Game Studio, has confirmed that they will start showcasing their first game, Slitterhead, in 2024. This is huge news, considering that the game has former creators of Silent Hill and Siren among its ranks.
All of this promises us a 2024 full of surprises, if expectations are met. So we will have to be aware of everything these developers do, because it seems that we have some very good years ahead in the Japanese video game.
