rdfs:comment
| - Originally headed by Masahiro Akishino, Wolf Team became independent from Telenet in 1987, was reintegrated in 1990 and merged with another Telenet subsidiary called Lasersoft, then was completely absorbed in an internal restructuring at Telenet in 1993, at which point most of the staff left together with Akishino. The remaining staff were the then-very-young programmer Yoshiharu Gotanda, designer Masaki Norimoto, director Joe Asanuma, graphic artist Yoshiaki Inagaki, sound composer Motoi Sakuraba, and sound effect designer Ryota Furuya. Wolf Team went on to create games such as Sol-Feace and Hiouden: Mamono-tachi tono Chikai, which faced weak sales. For Tale Phantasia, a game concept by Gotanda, they looked for an outside publisher with a better reputation. After approaching Enix, Telenet
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abstract
| - Originally headed by Masahiro Akishino, Wolf Team became independent from Telenet in 1987, was reintegrated in 1990 and merged with another Telenet subsidiary called Lasersoft, then was completely absorbed in an internal restructuring at Telenet in 1993, at which point most of the staff left together with Akishino. The remaining staff were the then-very-young programmer Yoshiharu Gotanda, designer Masaki Norimoto, director Joe Asanuma, graphic artist Yoshiaki Inagaki, sound composer Motoi Sakuraba, and sound effect designer Ryota Furuya. Wolf Team went on to create games such as Sol-Feace and Hiouden: Mamono-tachi tono Chikai, which faced weak sales. For Tale Phantasia, a game concept by Gotanda, they looked for an outside publisher with a better reputation. After approaching Enix, Telenet struck a contract with Namco. Namco, however, insisted upon many changes to the game, including renaming the title to Tales of Phantasia. The conflict over these changes pushed the game's release from 1994 into late 1995. Most of the initial staff left during this dispute and founded tri-Ace in early 1995. To continue the lucrative arrangement with Namco to develop the Tales series, Telenet re-staffed Wolf Team and retained some other staff, such as Motoi Sakuraba on a freelance basis. They developed or co-developed nearly every game in the series until Wolf Team was renamed to Namco Tales Studio in early 2003 and Namco assumed majority ownership. In October 2007, Telenet filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors, likely putting an end to the Wolf Team name. At the time of its renaming, Namco owned 60 percent of this venture, Telenet Japan and Kazuyuki Fukushima retained 34 percent, and Tales series director Eiji Kikuchi received 6 percent. Kikuchi, who was the head of Telenet's game development department for ten years, left Telenet to head the new team full-time. Effective April 1, 2006, the then-newly-merged Bandai Namco Holdings bought the remaining shares from Telenet Japan, cutting the last link to the developers' former employer and increasing its stock-holding majority to 94 percent. Currently, Bandai Namco now owns 100 percent of the company. Namco Tales Studios remains the primary developer of the so-called Mothership Titles of the Tales series, with the exception of Tales of Legendia and Tales of Innocence. Legendia was developed by an internal Namco development team called "Team Melfes", featuring a unique battle system developed by some of the creators of the Soulcalibur series of games, also a Namco property, which is why it is so different from the others. Innocence was developed by an independent developer, Alfa System, which also developed various spin-off games in the Tales series.
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