Kenji Ozawa, the Director of Visions of Mana, has announced that he has founded his own games studio, named Studio Sasanqua. This was originally spotted on Automaton Media. Studio Sasanqua was formally founded in January but was only revealed officially on March 3. The unveiling came with a small teaser trailer, which is entirely in Japanese. It doesn't show much and is a very arty video overall.
Kenji Ozawa left his previous employer, Ouka Studios, in December after the studio was closed down on the same day as Visions of Mana's incredibly successful release. This caused a huge uproar in the industry, but it doesn't come as much of a surprise considering the incredibly volatile climate in the games industry. On top of that, once people realized that NetEase was responsible, it was less of a surprise, as the giant continues to make layoffs and studio closures even in 2025. Most recently, Netease has had layoffs in its subsidiary Skybox Labs, as well as laying off some of the staff that worked on Marvel Rivals, despite being an incredibly successful game across the board.
All of this played a part in Kenji Ozawa's departure, saying that he moved to Studio Sasanqua after seeing that managers were not taking responsibility for failed projects. He also said, "Management needs to protect creators," which is something that isn't seen very often in today's climate. Plenty of developers in big and small companies have said that there is a severe lack of job security, with Spiders going on strike last year as a result of this. In an interview with Automaton Media, he explains that due to management not taking responsibility for the failures of a project, it's putting "too much responsibility on the shoulders of individual developers," who don't typically have a say in the decision-making at the company.
With his new studio, he plans to find a way to "integrate management and development," two parts of a company that are typically separate and function on their own. He also says that he is fully prepared to assume responsibility should one of the studio's projects fail because of poor management decisions. Ozawa says that the studio will start off by developing small-scale games that are developed in Unreal Engine, with the goal being to move over to making bigger titles on both PC and console.
For now, there is no news about what is coming from his studio other than knowing that the titles will be made in Unreal Engine.
