After leaving Xbox, the creator of Resident Evil wants to free himself from Survival Horror

In February 2023, fans of horror games were surprised by the departure of Shinji Mikami from Tango Gameworks (The Evil Within, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Hi-Fi RUSH), a studio now owned by Xbox since the acquisition of Bethesda. Finally, it was only last month that we learned that the creator of Resident Evil and The Evil Within had founded a brand new studio, called KAMUY Inc. The industry veteran recently gave an interview to Byking, the opportunity to talk about his departure and his new studio.

After leaving Xbox, the creator of Resident Evil wants to free himself from Survival Horror

Thanks to the transcription of Shinji Mikami's remarks by Automaton Mediawe can today learn more about his former status within Tango Gameworks.

I had only been CEO for 6 months. I think a lot of people felt like I was the rep, but I was very close to a rank-and-file employee. I had “___ producer” in my name, but I wasn’t an executive or anything like that.

He also clarified that Tango Gameworks is in no way the name of a company, but simply a department of ZeniMax Media. In fact, following the acquisition in 2010, he negotiated to keep the name “Tango Gameworks” in the form of a brand.

Tango Gameworks is not the name of a company, it is the name of a department. The company name is ZeniMax Asia KK

Even more interesting, while players imagined that his departure from Tango Gameworks was linked to the takeover by Microsoft in 2021, he revealed that he had been planning to leave since 8. However, his responsibilities on projects had held him back.

But then why did he want to leave? Shinji Mikami has had the ambition for several years to create an environment that would allow young game creators to have the opportunity to gain experience more often. In other words, he wants to propose new projects with shorter development cycles than what we can experience in the industry today.

He believes that there is an audience for such productions and thus believes that it is entirely possible to link these two factors.

Also, he wants to free himself from the survival horror genre, a style of game with which he is clearly associated. It is now very clear, we should see very varied games emerge from KAMUY Inc. in the coming years!