19th August 2003, 12:50 PM
Quote:President Satoru Iwata and former HAL Labs producer Masahiro Sakurai have reportedly held a number of reconciliation meetings in the past few weeks. The creator of Kirby, as well as the Super Smash Brothers series, decided to leave HAL earlier this summer due to conflicts over the development of Kirby Air Ride. As a result of the talks between the two Japanese gaming tycoons, Sakurai is now willing to work with Nintendo at some point in the future, although he will not be returning to his job at HAL Labs. Sakurai confirmed this report in an interview with the Japanese publication 'Nintendo Dream', and also stated that Iwata was compassionate and understanding about the decision to leave HAL.
Also, HAL Labs is now undergoing major internal changes and restructuring efforts, as a result.
Hopefully, he'll decide to come back to Nintendo.
It'll be interesting to see what changes are made at Hal and how this will affect their development of games.
N-Philes
Sometimes you get the scorpion.