Japanese developer Shinji Mikami founded his second studio, Unbound, and announced his return to the development of big-budget games.
UPDATE NEWS (April 1, 2026):
Shinji Mikami’s new studio was not independent for long. Just half a month after its establishment, it was taken over by the South Korean company SHIFT UP, known for the game Stellar Blade. This confirms that SHIFT Up will also be the publisher of Mikami’s next game, which he says is a pretty big project and will be a masterpiece.
At the same time, SHIFT UP says that they are targeting the global market with this game, and it will be interesting to see how they manage in all this, given the fact that they have no previous experience in distributing games. They left the distribution of their first game, Stellar Blade, to Sony Interactive Entertainment.
ORIGINAL NEWS (March 9, 2026):
Shinji Mikamithe legendary Japanese game designer, is back in action. Mikami has just founded a new studio, Unbound, which plans to produce high-budget games. More precisely, they will work on high-quality games that are not very bulky in terms of content.
The studio currently has around 50 employees, and their goal is to increase that number to 150 people. They will operate as an independent team, their first game will be an original IP for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox, and they are developing it in Unreal Engine 5.
For Mikami, this is the second studio he has founded and the fifth larger collective in which he has worked. Mikami spent most of his career, from the nineties to 2004, at Capcom where he is best known for his work on Resident Evil. He spent 13 years at the Tango Gameworks studio, where he launched The Evil Within series.