Clover lives again. In a blog post at Game|Life, it was made official that the recently closed Clover Studio will be resurrected as game studio SEEDS. The studio is independent of its former employer, and is currently without a publisher. The current list of employees is a who’s who list of contemporary Capcom success:
Atsushi Inaba (Okami, Viewtiful Joe, Viewtiful Joe 2, God Hand)
Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil series)
Hideki Kamiya (Okami, Viewtiful Joe, Viewtiful Joe 2, Devil May Cry);
Nao Ueda (Okami, Resident Evil 4)
Yuta Kimura (Okami, Shadow of the Colossus),
Mari Shimazaki (Okami)
Masami Ueda (Okami, Viewtiful Joe, Viewtiful Joe 2)
After the closure of Clover Studio, most of the staff was integrated into the various internal Capcom teams, but some staff members expressed that they wished to form a new studio–hence the formation of SEEDS.
The inclusion of Inaba, Mikami, and Kamiya is a huge development–virtually every acclaimed game Capcom has released in the past ten years has come from one of these three men. SEEDS’ status as an independent developer will probably be its greatest ally in the coming months, as it is very likely that it will be fielding offers from publishers around the globe.
With additional reporting by Billy Wang.
