Today Koei Tecmo announced via press release several changes in its structure and leadership, including a succession at the top of the company.
First of all, according to the official documents, Koei Tecmo Games has been split with the spin-off of a new subsidiary of Koei Tecmo Holdings, Koei Tecmo Corporate Finance. The new company will take over the investment functions of Koei Tecmo Games.
From June 2025, the current Executive Vice President Hisashi Koinuma will become Representative Director, President, and CEO of Koei Tecmo Holdings, succeeding Yoichi Erikawa, who will become Representative Director and Chairman.
The current Representative Director and Chairman Keiko Erikawa will become Director and Chairman Emeritus.
Interestingly, we also hear that Yosuke Hayashi general producer of Nioh 2, Director of Nioh, and veteran of the Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden series will retire from his role as Director. At the moment, it isn’t known whether he’ll stay at KT in other positions or not.
Both Keiko and Yoichi Erikawa will step down as Directors at Koei Tecmo Games, while Hisashi Koinuma (who was previously General Manager of the
Entertainment Division) will become Representative Director, President, CEO, and COO.
Lastly, Keiko Erikawa will take the reins of Koei Tecmo Corporate Finance as its Representative Director and President.
Koei Tecmo Games’ functions will remain mostly as they have been, “planning, development, and sales of software for PC and home video game consoles;
planning, development, and operation of online games and mobile content; planning and operation of events, etc.”
KT Corporate Finance will take care of “Fund management, lending, borrowing related to group companies, holding, managing, and investing in securities, etc.”
On top of that, KT also changed its leadership structure, with the “president” becoming responsible for business execution, and the “chairman” being responsible for management supervision as the chair of the board of directors.
If you’re unfamiliar with Hisashi Koinuma, who will be de factor KT’s boss going forward, he joined Koei in 1994 and was the main programmer on the Kessen series. He also worked directly on many games mainly in Producer roles, including Nioh, Hyrule Warriors, both Attack on Titan games, Berserk and the Band of the Hawk, many Samurai Warriors games, and more.
Every time I interviewed him in the past, he mentioned one day he’d like to make a Star Wars game. He is no stranger to doing interviews in cosplay, so he’s definitely a cool dude.
If you’d like to read more, you can check out Koei Tecmo’s latest financial results.