Visions of Mana staff members had left NetEase Ouka Studios, with some of them moving to Square Enix

Visions of Mana has been available for a short while, but its development team in NetEase's Ouka Studio does not survive long enough to see Square Enix's new RPG flourish in the market. The game's directors Ryosuke Yoshida and Kenji Ozawa have announced on their respective X accounts that they had left Ouka Studio on October 31. While Ozawa has still yet to announce his new affiliation, Yoshida revealed that he has just joined Square Enix this December.

The recent announcements confirmed more credence for a Bloomberg report published on August 30—the day right after Square Enix released Visions of Mana on August 29. The report included a statement that NetEase gradually laid off Ouka Studio's staff members, with a few remaining to oversee the release of the studio's last titles—when there was really just one that is Visions of Mana.

With the key directors having already left, Ouka Studio looks pretty much set to have its doors permanently closed. But while the same Bloomberg report also noted how the major Chinese companies are reconsidering their investments in the Japanese gaming industry, there have not been more visible effects in other invested Japanese studios.

For example, the ex-Yakuza/Like a Dragon series producer Toshihiro Nagoshi set up Nagoshi Studio under NetEase in 2022, and this studio is still looking well with a new brand video and Famitsu interview published this November. Meanwhile, the ex-Capcom director Hideaki Itsuno—who last worked on Dragon's Dogma 2—was also revealed to be the central figure in the establishment of a new Japanese studio for Tencent's subsidiary Lightspeed Studios.

With Ryosuke Yoshida now affiliated directly with Square Enix, the latter company still manages to retain some of the key staff members behind Visions of Mana, should they ever decide to update it. The game is available worldwide on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.