Several prominent game creators from Bandai Namco shared their plans and aspirations for 2024 in 4Gamer’s end-of-year compilation. The producers for the Tales Of and Ace Combat series are particularly preparing for the 30th anniversary, both of which will fall in 2025. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]
One of the biggest teasers by the company comes from Yusuke Tomizawa. The producer has been mostly preoccupied with the Tales Of series as he recently released the Tales of Arise: Beyond the Dawn expansion in November 2023.
While Tomizawa is preparing for the Tales Of series’ 30th anniversary in 2025, he also revealed his involvement in several other titles. However, he did not specify whether these titles will be related to Tales Of or other franchises he previously worked on, such as God Eater.
“. . . As we are finally getting closer to the major milestone that is the 30th anniversary, we also continue to move and think about our own duties and evolutions this year.
Other than that, I am also involved with standby titles. But since nowadays each of them takes a long time to develop, I’d like to stimulate every workplace while aiming for mutual feedback.”
Yusuke Tomizawa
Another teaser comes from Katsuaki Tsuzuki, the producer of One Piece Pirate Warriors 4, One Piece Odyssey, and Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions. In recent months, he rejuvenated the 2020 game Pirate Warriors 4 with a new DLC pass containing three sets of three characters. The fifth pack featuring One Piece Film: Red characters will launch on January 11, 2024, and the sixth pack is still yet to be unveiled.
“I’ll do my best so I can deliver new information to everyone next year as well, so I hope you will kindly look forward to it.”
Katsuaki Tsuzuki
Kazutoki Kono of the Ace Combat series fame has also been working on a new game ever since Project Aces collaborated with ILCA to establish the Bandai Namco Aces studio. In a 2022 interview, Kono confirmed that his team is working on projects to celebrate the series’ 30th anniversary, which will fall in 2025, just like the Tales Of series.
“A lot of things happened last year, but even so ‘not forgetting gratitude’ is really an absolute must. Furthermore, my aspiration in 2024 is ‘to be healthy, having fun, and enthusiastic.’ When you create a new game, the whole team feels the daily labor pain. However, when you feel like having fun, you can really solve problems and get good outputs. You have to deal with it enthusiastically in the first place to achieve that, and that’s where I actually feel the necessity to have both good health and wellbeing.”
Kazutoki Kono
Other staff members with known upcoming and available titles also contributed to the annual project. The list includes Keishu Minami with Sand Land, Yusuke Takayama with The Idolm@ster: Shiny Colors series, Yayoi Tomidokoro with Ace Angler: Fishing Spirits, Sokichi Shimooka with Blue Protocol, and Koji Tezuka with Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle and One Piece: Bounty Rush.
One of Bandai Namco’s most prominent staff members who has an upcoming release in the works is Katsuhiro Harada. He is working on Tekken 8 together with Kohei “Nakatsu” Ikeda. Bandai Namco will release the new fighting game on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on January 26, 2024.
Nakatsu also reminded people to prepare for the Tekken series’ 30th anniversary, which falls in 2024. Meanwhile, Harada added more blurb at the end of his message:
“. . . Other than Tekken, there are also many various things under development, so when the time comes please let me advertise them.
By the way, I’ve been thinking about this every year, but does everyone read this?” *laughs*
Katsuhiro Harada
Prominent creators at Bandai Namco have shared their plans for 2024, which include the Tales Of and Ace Combat series’ celebrating their 30th anniversary.
