Junichi Masuda, one of the founders of Game Freak, current Managing Director, and long-time composer of the Pokémon series — among many, many other roles at the company — is stepping down from his role for pastures new.
Masuda has been with Game Freak since it was formed in 1989, and has been the producer and director for many Pokémon games over the years. Today, however, he jumps over to The Pokémon Company, where he'll hold the title of Chief Creative Fellow, where he'll use his knowledge of the series to help develop new services and products. It's a pretty similar move to what Shigeru Miyamoto made, who became Creative Fellow at Nintendo to help manage the brand and step away from the game development side of things.
The Pokémon Company shared this statement about the news on its website:
The Pokémon Company is pleased to announce the appointment of Junichi Masuda as its Chief Creative Fellow, effective June 1, 2022.
Junichi Masuda has served as the Managing Director at GAME FREAK inc., the original creator of Pokémon, until May 31. As one of the founding members of GAME FREAK, he was involved in the development of “Pokémon Red Version and Pokémon Green Version,” supporting the development of the subsequent Pokémon video game series for many years. Masuda will utilize his deep understanding of the Pokémon brand to develop new services and products at the Pokémon Company, tapping into his years of experience and creative thinking.
Comments from Junichi Masuda
I have served as the director of the Pokémon video game series, starting with “Pokémon Ruby Version and Pokémon Sapphire Version” up until “Pokémon X and Pokémon Y,” and was involved in the development of many video games, including Pokémon GO. I would like to express my heart-felt thanks to all Pokémon fans.
Going forward, I hope to transcend the boundaries of video games by trying to offer greater surprises, fun and excitement to people all over the world, while doing my utmost to connect people, expand the circle of “play” and to help bring about a richer world for us to share. I appreciate your continued support in my new role.
We wish Junichi Masuda well in his new role! And we're sure we'll be seeing more of him over the coming years.
How do you feel about the news? Let us know in the comments.
[source gematsu.com]
Comments 31
What a Creative Fellow! I wish him all the best in his new role, although it's pretty vague what it entails exactly.
I feel like they made a new role specifially for him lol
I wish him the best, where ever this new path leads him.
Well done, Masuda. He takes a lot of the blame from those who have complaints about the 3D era of Pokemon but we owe many of the series' best ideas and inspirations to this man. Legend.
Thank you for everything, Masuda-san! You're a legend!
Now it's time for new challenges, and other people to take over the mantle in the mainline Pokémon games!
Very excited for the future of the franchise!
Well, good luck for the new position.
For people who don't realize how big this is, it's like Aonuma stopping working on Zelda...
Gamefreak was already going through big changes, but now we will see them much more clearly in the next games, hopefully for the best!
Wishing him the very best in his future endeavours and thank you for everything you did. I've been playing Pokèmon since day one and I own all the games too and I look forward to seeing what Gamefreak have in Store from here on out.
Best of luck to him, and the chap that will take his old role.
Masuda has made such a massive contribution to gaming. Pokemon is a monster success (ahem.) Good luck with his new role and here's to the future of Pokemon
If rumours are true he’s off to work on a big Pokemon NFT project.
I’m thankful for all his work on the series and I’m wishing him all the best in his new position.
That said, I can’t even begin to describe how happy I am he’ll no longer be directing the games. Half the problem is gone, now for the rest of it.
Let's hope this means the brass at the Pokemon Company starts to care about the video games and not just selling over priced teddies and cards.
A legend in the games industry. But a welcome departure now, considering how recent Pokemon games have become such a race to the bottom in terms of quality, content, and challenge.
@Xiovanni Kind of like how Miyamoto is the creative fellow at Nintendo, but it feels like all he's doing lately is harassing the producers of the Mario movie and Universal Studios, lol.
Glad for the guy since it seems he invested a big part of his life to this brand, and happy for the fan base since a lot of you guys blame this dude for the current state of the games, here's to a furure with better pokemon games and a better brand managment!
Good luck to him and all his future endeavours! Even if he's been embroiled in a fair bit of controversy in recent times, what he's done for Pokemon (whether that be the music, region or anything else in between) cannot be understated. It'll be interesting to see where Pokemon goes after SV now now that all of the old guard have more or less moved on. If Legends Arceus was any indication, things are looking very exciting!
A well-deserved promotion, despite all of the hurdles that came and went.
So thankful that he's departing. Gamefreak/Pokemon's needed a change of leadership for a long time now. Hoping this means great things are in store for Pokemon and that the franchise has a bright future ahead of it after so many years of stagnation and lackluster, under developed releases.
@Xiovanni And what is the mess he caused and is so responsible of?
We lost Junichi Masuda a long time ago.
I respect him for what he did in the past but it's been about a decade since he's lost any and all BotD from me.
This is the guy who, in an interview, admitted to cutting Battle Frontier from ORAS and making games easier because people have smartphones and so have many other games to play. That's his excuse for cutting content in his games, and it doesn't take a genius to realize his philosophy hasn't changed in recent years.
@BLD it sort of sounds like he hates his own games. Kind of like how bands with hit singles grow to hate their own creations sometimes. What better way to sabotage games than to cut content or features.
While there have been great games headed by him, and the gens that introduced me to Pokémon - 3 and 4 - were already under him, I think this is for the better. The fact that he was overseeing BDSP and not as involved (it seemed) with Legends Arceus was revealing, and I hope this means that he'll be more focused on other things and let other people take over the games more and more. There's talent and new life in Game Freak and I think we'll start to see that more and more. I was very happy with Legends Arceus, I hope they continue that trend. And less of a direct involvement from Masuda seems to be part of the reason for the new direction.
I wish Masuda well in his new role. Irregardless of what the series has become in recent years in the name of "accessibility", there's no denying he's made some great contributions to gaming. I was honestly expecting this to be a retirement announcement.
Despite everything people have said about him, I wish Masuda the very best in his new endeavor.
@TommyTendo Isn't it Shigeru Miyamoto's current role at Nintendo also? I feel like it just means a figurehead.
Thank god.
Maybe someone better will take his place.
I’m surprised that some people still like him.
Don’t most people hate him because of stuff that I don’t know about but have a vague idea it might be something?
I am really happy for him. Hopefully this role will be more peaceful and the Pokemon anti-fanbase can stop blaming him for everything they don’t like.
Another end of another era
@wanghosom More like Miyamoto stopping working on Zelda. And the series went in the toilet without him until he had to step in and revive it with BotW's blueprints...
@KAI_MIDORIKAWA TBH Miyamoto's role originally sounded like a figurehead, but in reality he's still been doing tons of hands-on stuff, but only on the brands/IP management/multimedia expansion side of the business instead of the video games side. Could be the same for Masuda, more merchandising, media, branding than video game production.
The IP will be better without him at the helm.
Much of my (past) respect for Masuda was as a musical composer.
While I consider this a positive change, there is still much work to be done to improve Game Freak and Pokemon as a whole. I'm not sure the current talent is up to par either. Pokemon games the past few years have had many glaring flaws and stupid oversights that were clearly made by people with little knowledge or experience in the industry, and even less about history of the series.
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