Sora Ltd.

History

After years of working for development company HAL Laboratory, Masahiro Sakurai and his wife Michiko Sakurai decided to quit HAL to work as freelancers with their own company. Sora was built as an agency that would contract them as freelancers to different companies. His first project under Sora was Meteos with Q Entertainment. Nintendo's Satoru Iwata hired Sakurai, someone he had worked with at HAL Laboratory, to work on Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Development was supported by various other studios, including Game Arts and Monolith Soft.

On 18 February 2009, Nintendo announced the formation of Project Sora, a subsidiary created to develop a new video game, which would be directed by Sakurai. The development group was located in Iidabashi, Tokyo. The company was officially formed on 22 January 2009, with capital of 200 million ¥, of which 72% was provided by Nintendo and the remainder by Sora Ltd. and other parties. Sakurai served as the company's president. The studio began development of Kid Icarus: Uprising with a staff of 30 developers (most of whom were recruits Nintendo hired for the development of Super Smash Bros. Brawl), with more staff being recruited during the development process. Kid Icarus: Uprising was released in March 2012 for the Nintendo 3DS. Project Sora ceased operations on June 30. The official Project Sora website announced: "The company was dissolved on June 30th, 2012. Thank you very much for your patronage so far. This website will be closed on July 31st." Bandai Namco Studios would collaborate with Sora Ltd. for the development of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Both games were published by Nintendo.