Kirby Creator Forms New Company

Masahiro Sakurai, creator of the Kirby and Smash Brothers series at HAL Labs, and more recently the director of Meteos for Q Entertainment, has announced that he will be forming a new company. The new venture, called Sora, has two projects in the works, though neither project has a confirmed release platform or date, or indeed any other revealed information yet. Nothing would prevent one of the projects from being a sequel to one of his Nintendo projects, as Nintendo frequently works with outside developers -- HAL Labs being a prime example -- but Sakurai's distaste for sequels was cited as one of his reasons for leaving HAL in August 2003. As mentioned in the original Nintendo Inside story, translated by consumer site Game-Science, Sakurai has been making appearances lately at trade shows, such as the recent Tokyo Game Show. Sakurai showed up at events for Weekly Famitsu publisher Enterbrain as well as Hideo Kojima's presentation for Metal Gear Solid 4.