Okay, so it’s not quite as grand a gesture as, say, Capcom showering the former employees of the now-defunct Clover Studio with cash and concubines and granting them carte blanche to create whatever bizarre or otherwise unusual title that they wanted to create, but it’s still good news. We learned late last year that, while Capcom was intent on welcoming the bulk of Clover’s 64 employees back into the fold, a select few would not be returning, including Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami and the director of Okami, Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe, Hideki Kamiya. Now, at least, we know what’s been keeping them busy.
Say hello to Seeds Inc., a new start-up development studio born of Clover’s untimely demise, brought about by a supergroup-esque coalition of talent including both Mikami and Kamiya, as well as several others from Clover. While it’s very likely that we’ll see some extremely original titles coming out of this development studio, don’t get your hopes up for an Okami 2 — at least, not from Seeds. As part of the terms of the studio’s dissolution, all of the intellectual property created by Clover Studio has defaulted back to Capcom.
Still, it’s very nice to see the house that brought us God Hand live on in one form or another. Seems to be that there’s a growing trend of the best minds in gaming breaking off from their corporate masters and goin’ all vigilante; here’s hoping for some dynamite product in the near future.
