Katsuhiro Harada, known for the Tekken series, said in an interview with VGC that he believes executives at major Japanese game companies “don’t play prototypes or finished games.” According to him, they attend meetings to discuss profit and loss and break-even points, but never actually touch game builds or give feedback on them — with the SNK Group being a clear exception. On 5ch, opinions split over how sweeping this claim was, with some saying a division of labor between management and creative staff is only natural, and others arguing that management decisions made without understanding the ground level are the reason for repeated failures.
Katsuhiro Harada suggested that executives at major Japanese game development companies “don’t play prototypes or finished versions” of the games their own companies make. He did, however, single out the SNK Group as a clear “exception” to this pattern.
In the VGC interview, Harada described the image he has of executives at major Japanese game developers. He explained that while they attend meetings to discuss profit and loss and break-even points, they never actually play the game builds themselves or give feedback on their content. The picture he paints is one where executives sit in on the numbers meetings but never touch the actual builds.
Harada then broadened the point to the upper management of the Japanese game industry as a whole, stating firmly, as his own view, that there’s no one there actually playing the games their companies make.
The company with the table-flipping monster (someone who abruptly overturns everything already decided)
6AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:49
If this culture has just kept dragging on unchecked among Japanese game company executives, then no wonder nobody said "delay Sword Art Online and rebuild it properly"…
7AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:50
At companies that are purely development studios, the top brass are often creators themselves, so they probably do play the games a lot. But at publishers that both develop and sell games, the people at the top probably mostly don't.
8AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:50
What about Nintendo's president, the Fire Emblem devotee?
9AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:51
Even 'Boss' Yamauchi reportedly checked things on actual hardware back in the day, according to old stories. Isn't this just about the company you used to work at?
10AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:51
If he had to play every single game Bandai Namco releases, that'd be rough, no?
11AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:51
Surely some companies do play them — that's way too broad a generalization. And honestly, even setting aside whether they play games or not, it's obvious that game development and running a company require completely different skill sets. Just look at Director Kojima — when a developer gets too much power, they can end up ignoring deadlines entirely, which can be fatal for the business.
15AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:55
Re: #11
If they're discussing profit and loss without even knowing what kind of game is coming out, then when a title bombs, they can't figure out the reason themselves and point it out to the dev team — that pattern just keeps repeating. Isn't that how some publishers end up making it too late to fix things?
39AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:05
Re: #15
I think management just needs to trust capable employees and make good use of them. Sure, there are companies where it's fine for the top to overturn development decisions on their own judgment. Either approach can work, so it feels off to flatly reject one of them.
80AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:20
Re: #15
Isn't it the job of the producers and dev team leadership to explain to management and investors what kind of game they want to make next, in order to secure budget and staff? And investigating why a game didn't sell is handled by separate departments — the ones that gather user feedback and complaints, and market research — which exist apart from management.
That said, if the dev team, producers, customer service, and market research staff are all a bunch of untrustworthy liars whose written reports can't be relied on, or a bunch of talkers-only that nobody trusts internally because you never know what they'll do the moment you look away — then sure, management would get worried and start dropping by more often to have their say.
12AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:52
Playing Tekken once is plenty. No matter how many characters they add, you can't tell the difference anyway.
13AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:53
Sony actually played their games properly, so others should take note.
19AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:58
Re: #13
Hey, that's a legendary hero who helped purify the game industry!
35AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:04
Re: #13
They're snorting something and testing brainwave-controlled input, that's why they hold the controller weirdly, right?
14AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:55
Wait, so the Crown Prince was the one giving the go-ahead on karate move balancing?!
16AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:56
There are plenty of stories of CEOs personally scouting indie games — Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, all of them. Isn't 'the higher-ups don't play games' just a Bandai Namco thing?
17AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:58
This is the whining of the development head who's been putting out garbage Bandai Namco games for years.
18AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:58
"Management" isn't just the president — it includes sales too, and sales staff who don't play the games are nothing unusual. Honestly, this has always been a common story whenever dev teams and sales are at odds. And for what it's worth, sales tends to outrank game producers in the company hierarchy anyway.
20AnonymousSep 16, 2026 14:59
He said the air tasted great after quitting, so his frustration with management must have been considerable. He's a 3D fighting game guy — I wonder what he'll make at SNK.
22AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:00
Koei Tecmo's Kou Shibusawa actually plays the games, doesn't he?
23AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:01
SoftBank Chairman Sadaharu Oh still swings a bat to coach players even now. That's the World's Oh for you.
26AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:02
Re: #23
The question is whether Watanabe Tsuneo (aka "Nabetsune," the Yomiuri Giants chairman) actually plays baseball, though.
24AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:01
That's really not a big deal though. Like a busy big-corporation president is gonna sit down and play games lol
25AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:01
Whether they actually play the games isn't really the point — it's more about how well upper management understands what's happening on the ground. Not just in games, either; it's a common story of higher-ups who don't know the front lines making unreasonable demands.
27AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:02
The CEO plays them though, at game companies.
29AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:03
The baseball example makes it clearest — basically, at companies whose core business is print media or other media, it's the people who don't play games at all who end up at the top, that's what this is about.
30AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:03
Does this guy know anything about companies besides Namco and SNK?
31AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:03
It's not "Japan," it's Bandai Namco. You can't know what other companies' setups are like from hearsay alone — maybe some other studio's dev team was just thinking '(whoa, Bandai Namco really is done for) yeah totally, same over here' while nodding along.
32AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:04
So if they played the games and then gave notes, would you actually listen without pushback?
45AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:08
I mean, so what? Fast food company executives don't eat fast food either, right?
58AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:12
Re: #45
Word is Nissin's founder ate it every single day, and gave notes when it wasn't good enough.
63AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:12
Executives are fine as they are — that's what producers are there for. The problem is when they're so out of touch that they run wild in a direction nobody actually wants.
67AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:14
Re: #63
Yeah well, in reality even a fair number of producers don't play their own company's titles.
68AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:14
Is this about Namco or about Bandai? Which one?
92AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:28
Re: #68
Bandai Namco, obviously.
73AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:16
Do you think Nintendo actually checks out the third-party games they feature in a Nintendo Direct? lol Or do they just introduce whatever they're paid to, without playing it? lol
81AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:20
This sounds exactly like the kind of topic someone who doesn't play games would love lol
83AnonymousSep 16, 2026 15:22
Re: #81
That's disrespectful to Harada.
Background and key points of this discussion
Harada has led the Tekken series as producer for many years, and it was only recently revealed this year that he’s moving to the SNK Group. This remark comes from a VGC interview, and what sparked pushback in the thread was that his subject wasn’t limited to “Bandai Namco” but broadened to “major Japanese game companies” in general. The debate split roughly into two camps. One took the practical view that it’s only natural for management to focus on profit and loss rather than actual gameplay, since that’s simply a division of labor. The other took the critical view that judging things by numbers alone, without understanding what’s happening on the ground, is exactly why companies keep getting withdrawal-or-continue decisions wrong. Both sides backed their arguments with real examples of executives who did play and make hands-on decisions, like Koei Tecmo’s Kou Shibusawa and Nintendo’s “Boss” Yamauchi. One thing readers can easily misunderstand is that this remark was made purely in Harada’s personal interview — he never actually named any specific companies himself.
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