Rumors had been circling for a while that Yuji Naka, famed head of Sega’s internal development studio Sonic Team, was going to be leaving Sega. Finally, on May 8th, the rumors were confirmed that as of June 1, 2006, Naka would be leaving Sega and forming his own development studio, Prope. The Prope website leaves this little explanation for the name:

“PROPE” (pronounced “pro-pe”) is a Latin word which means “beside” and “near” future.

We named our company PROPE in the hopes of bringing game entertainment much closer to users, establishing closer ties between users and us, and creating near future entertainment.

Naka isn’t cutting off all ties with Sega; Sega will be investing 10% of the $90,000 startup cost for the studio, and the US and European branches of Sega have already committed to publishing games from the new development house. The reasoning behind the split is less clear, and Business Week has a few ideas on why this might have happened.

One issue is Sega’s current lack of A-list titles on the market; since the Dreamcast failed, Sega’s game quality has been by and large sliding. Certain properties, like Virtua Fighter and Super Monkey Ball have been hits in the past, but they really haven’t been the mega-hits like Sonic was when it first hit the States. Sega might have felt that shaking up more of its development studios would help get some creativity and originality back. Certainly, this happened when Sega originally divided the various AM teams into more segmented studios, but in time, most of the developers either left Sega or were folded back into the corporation.

It is also possible that the slide of recent Sonic games into kind of a B-list property may have forced Sega’s hand in pushing Naka away. Certainly there is precedent for this; Gunpei Yokoi, creator of the Gameboy, would be one such story. Despite the huge success of the Gameboy, the failure of the Virtual Boy would lead to his ouster. This could be a strong possibility for letting Naka go, while still keeping some ties in case he can “recapture the magic” in the eyes of Sega corporate. Or, this could be just a case where Naka felt like his options were constrained working in the Sega environment. This seems a little less likely, since Sega has allowed Naka a great deal of leeway in the past to pursue other projects.

Ultimately, while Sega is keeping some measure of connection to Yuji Naka, having the creator of one of the most important franchises in Sega history is a huge moment, and hopefully, Naka can unleash more creativity in the future to bring great gaming to the public.

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