Creatures Inc CEO and Executive Vice President step down from the Pokémon developer

In today’s surprising and slightly worrying news, both Tsunekazu Ishihara (CEO/President) and Hirokazu Tanaka (Executive Vice President) of Creatures Inc. have announced their decision to step down from their positions in the Japanese video game studio. They are to be replaced by Yuji Kitano and Tomotaka Komura, respectively.

The news was broken by Joe Merrick, owner of the popular Pokémon information site Serebii.net. According to a report by Gamesradar, there is currently no explanation for this high-level changes in the company, and it’s not yet clear how this could affect the Pokémon franchise and its multimedia franchise/empire, or if it even will. However, Ishihara was not only CEO at Creatures Inc., but is also CEO at The Pokémon Company. Some fans might recognize him as the host of the Pokémon Present showcases released over the past few years, where he gives fans updates and news about new and upcoming products related to the license.

On the other hand, while Tanaka might not be known as a present figure in Pokémon, he’s actually one of the composers that worked in the games’ music back when it was in the GameBoy and GameBoy Advance era, pioneering several chiptune music techniques and changing the way sounds were done in the entire videogame industry.

What’s next for Creatures Inc. and Pokémon?

Perhaps Creatures In. might not be that recognizable to Pokémon fans, but they’ve been one of the co-developers of the franchise since the first generation (Red and Blue). The studio has been actively helping with the Pokémon games by creating the models for the hundreds of monsters you find catch and battle with, as well as helping with their development, and they are the sole creators of Detective Pikachu game and its upcoming sequel.

With The Pokémon Company owned by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures, it’s not entirely certain what will happen next. Ishihara is still listed as the president of the larger corporation, but if he were to be replaced in that role as well then we might have much larger changes in the coming months and years. After all, Pokémon has been diverting its attention from video games in support of expanding into other forms of media. We’ll just have to wait and see how it all turns out.

Source | Gamesradar, Twitter