{"id":83451,"date":"2026-06-01T04:17:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T08:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=83451"},"modified":"2026-06-01T05:36:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T09:36:26","slug":"another-vital-figure-has-left-bandai-namco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=83451","title":{"rendered":"Another Vital Figure Has Left Bandai Namco"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bandai Namco&#8217;s Tekken team has had several high-profile departures over the past year. First was assistant director Yohei Shimbori in August of 2025, followed by Executive Director and the &#8220;face of Tekken&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/tekken-boss-katsuhiro-harada-is-leaving-bandai-namco-after-30-years-of-iron-fist-tournaments\/1100-6536752\/\">Katsuhiro Harada<\/a>&#8211;who recently revealed his new studio in partnership with SNK. Today, another Tekken developer and fighting-game veteran has officially announced his departure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kohei Ikeda, known among fans under the moniker &#8220;Nakatsu,&#8221; has worked at Bandai Namco for over 20 years&#8211;primarily on the Tekken series but also contributing to games like Soulcalibur IV and the Project X Zone titles. He served as both game director and chief producer on Tekken 8. But that tenure appears to be ending, as he announced in a post on X, in both English and Japanese, that he is leaving after two decades with the company. <\/p>\n<p>  https:\/\/twitter.com\/nkt_dreamer\/status\/2061296807259595212?s=20  <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Becoming part of the company I had always admired&#8211;[Bandai] Namco&#8211;was truly a dream come true,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;Dedicating ourselves wholeheartedly to game development together remains one of the most cherished experiences of my life.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While Nakatsu didn&#8217;t give a definitive reason for leaving the company, it does not mark the end of his career in games development as he also said he<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bandai Namco&#8217;s Tekken team has had several high-profile departures over the past year. First was assistant director Yohei Shimbori in August of 2025, followed by Executive Director and the &#8220;face of Tekken&#8221; Katsuhiro Harada&#8211;who recently revealed his new studio in partnership with SNK. Today, another Tekken developer and fighting-game veteran has officially announced his departure&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":83453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external","brand-gamespot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83451"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83451"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83454,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83451\/revisions\/83454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/83453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}