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Cygames hires Square Enix veteran Akihiko Yoshida

Yoshida joins production subsidiary as company director, will also work with creative teams

Akihiko Yoshida, the veteran game artist best known for his work at Square Enix, has joined CyDesignation as its new company director.

CyDesignation is a subsidiary of Cygames, the developer of Rage of Bahamut. According to Gematsu, it's focus is production and planning, though Yoshida will also contribute to new projects as an art director.

"It brings me great pride and honor to be working for CyDesignation as a director," Yoshida said in a statement. "Although I must admit that it's not without some trepidation, too. Regardless, I'm still a creator at heart and I look forward to continuing to create inventive, meaningful content with the help of friends I've come to know and a fantastic team made up of some of the industry's brightest and most surprising and talented developers."

Yoshida worked at Square Enix for 18 years, starting in 1995 and ending in December last year. During that time his character designs helped define the look of popular franchises like Final Fantasy, Tactics Ogre and Bravely Default.

No mention was made of Yoshida's role on the development team of Playdek's Unsung Story, which he joined at the start of the year.

Cygames said that the first game with Yoshida as art director will be announced soon.

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Matthew Handrahan joined GamesIndustry in 2011, bringing long-form feature-writing experience to the team as well as a deep understanding of the video game development business. He previously spent more than five years at award-winning magazine gamesTM.
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