It was announced on February 28, 2023 that video game industry veterans Toshinori Aoki and Toshimichi Mori joined forces to found a new game studio known as Studio Flare. Operating out of Gotanda, Tokyo, the new company will be focused on developing console games for a worldwide audience of gamers. They will also be backed with funding from NetEase Games, who are the company behind such mobile titles as Knives Out and Naraka Bladepoint.
Both founders of Studio Flare are veterans of the video game industry with resumes featuring popular games from across the spectrum of titles and genres. Toshinori Aoki has served as a producer on several different games and was on the board of directors at Marvelous, the company behind the Story of Seasons. He will act as Studio Flare’s president and CEO.
Toshimichi Mori is best known as the producer of the popular Blazblue fighting game franchise which he worked on during his time at Arc System Works. Mori left Arc System Works in 2022 to pursue other opportunities.
It is currently unknown what kind of games and projects might come from Studio Flare. But you can experience Mori’s work in the form of the last Blazblue game, BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle right now. Cross tag Battle was originally released in 2018 for the PS4 and was later ported to PC via Steam and the Nintendo Switch. It will be ported to Xbox platforms in 2023.
