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Yo-kai Watch 4

Report: Yo-kai Watch 4 delay due to "employee exodus"

An unconfirmed report suggests that Level-5 has been losing staff and that's the reason why the next Yo-kai Watch game and Inazuma Eleven Ares are being held back.

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According to the folks over at Nifty News (and then via Nintendo Soup), a "mass exodus" of employees at Level-5 is the cause behind delays for Yo-kai Watch 4 and Inazuma Eleven Ares, with a shortage of manpower at the studio the reason cited for delays to both projects.

In the case of Inazuma Eleven Ares, which is heading to Android, iOS, PS4, and Switch next year, the studio recently confirmed that it had switched external partners (you can watch the full video here, although there's a handy digest over on Gematsu) because the first external studio that signed up to collaborate wasn't able to handle the demands of the project. That being the case, the game's release has been pushed back beyond May 2019 (it was originally supposed to land last summer) and Level-5 is now working with another studio. That being the case, CEO Akihiro Hino's statement from December appears to contradict this latest report.

With regards to Yo-kai Watch 4, which is heading exclusively to Nintendo Switch, it appears that back in October the game's Japanese release was pushed back into 2019, and a release date has yet to be confirmed. There's much less information regarding this case, and so it's more plausible that staffing issues are holding up the game's development. That said, Level 5 has yet to respond to claims about the loss of employees and the impact of that alleged loss, so take this report with a pinch of salt for now.

Yo-kai Watch 4

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