According to a new report, development studio Level-5—known for the Professor Layton series, Yo-Kai Watch games, and others like Inazuma Eleven—has “virtually halted its operations in North America.”
The news out of GamesIndustry.biz says that Level-5 International America and Level-5 Abby (its spin-off team) began scaling back operations in 2019, which included major staff layoffs with no reason given at the time for doing so. The remaining staff worked on wrapping up ongoing projects, and sources for GamesIndustry.biz stated that there are no longer any plans for additional offerings from Level-5 to be released outside of Japan in the future.
This comes as a surprise considering all the localization promises made around Yo-Kai Watch 4 earlier this year. The last project we saw from the studio in North America was an early 2020 release, Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl – Gold.
Fans of the abovementioned franchises will certainly be disappointed if no additional releases are ever forthcoming in other regions, however it’s always possible the Japanese titles could be localized by another outside company, or even by Nintendo itself.
We’ll keep you posted if there are any developments in this story.
