Valhalla Game Studios moves to Canada

Japanese studio Valhalla Games has relocated to Canada to expand its presence in the Western games market.

The developer was founded in 2009 by Dead or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki, and is staffed by a number of his former colleagues from Koei Tecmo studio Team Ninja.

Its first game, Devil’s Third, released for Wii U last year, with an online multiplayer-only version, Devil’s Third Online, planned for PC this year.

Itagaki has now revealed that the dev will move its head offices to Vancouver, Canada, to better position itself for future global releases.

"Our group has excellent staff who are able to compete in at the top level in the world,” he wrote on the Vahalla blog. “We believe this is one of our big advantages.

“To maximize this advantage, we have transferred our headquarters to Canada. It is better to set a development base in Western countries than Japan in order to gather talented creators scattered from all over the world and I have made a judgment that Vancouver is the most appropriate place for this.

“By acquiring a new base for success, which enables us to use our global network, we will produce new games which can give more surprise to the game world. The best warriors gathered at Valhalla will challenge the battlefield in front of us to create exciting games.

“We will keep producing the best games in the world focusing on entertaining game fans all over the world. I’m in the state of bliss that can sail against this endless challenge.”