Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami has been working on a new AAA action RPG for at least 1 year after Microsoft closed his last studio, and no one noticed

Resident Evil co-creator and original director Shinji Mikami has apparently been gradually building a secret project at new studio Unbound, seemingly beginning work as its representative director not long after Microsoft officially shut down his last studio to have released a game, Tango Gameworks, in 2024.

The Hi-Fi Rush studio has now found a new home under PUBG developer Krafton, and Mikami, who left Tango in 2023, had already moved on. His latest studio Unbound is – as recently spotted by VGC – actively recruiting for an unannounced, original IP.

According to a 2024 translation by Automaton, Mikami last founded a company called Kamuy with the hope of focusing on short release cycles led by young talent, and also to separate himself from the survival horror genre. He hasn't spoken much about Kamuy since then.

Instead, in a 2025 interview (machine translated by GamesRadar+) with Japanese job recruitment site Nidan Jump, Unbound producer – and former Tango producer – Masato Kimura emphasizes the studio's commitment to those fun development projects Mikami was looking for with its small team of both fresh and veteran developers. He explains Unbound is actively creating a large, super realistic action-RPG and aims to release it globally.

There could be a hint as to what tone that RPG might take on Unbound's website, which presents what seems to be its mission statement in the form of looping Japanese and English text.

I'm finding it even harder to interpret than Mikami's months of quiet, however. It consists of the following, disquieting monologue: "He creates it in his own unique environment. It has always been that way. He lives surrounded by what he loves. Nothing can bend him. People around me say I'm a bit strange, but I've gotten used to it. A world of his own? No, it's a world that is not bound by anything.

"If asked to list five characteristics, he would probably say, 'Numbers are interesting, because constraints are like a game.' There's probably no particular problem, he'll be fine."

Yeah, I guess I'd play something like that.

Resident Evil Requiem Leon actor says the new horror game "could have been just a solo Grace" outing, but the dual protagonists make it feel "like 2 different games."