Kazumasa “Habumon” Habu, the producer for many games in the Digimon franchise, has announced that he is no longer involved in the development of future Digimon games.
As posted on his personal Twitter/X, Kazumasa Habu, also goes by Habumon, announced that he is “no longer in charge of producing Digimon games due to an internal personnel change.”
【ご報告】
社内の人事異動に伴い、デジモンゲームのプロデュース担当から外れることとなりました。
実際には昨年の4月の時点で担当からは外れており、引き継ぎを粛々と行っておりました。新作のデジモンストーリーは信頼するディレクターの下、チームが開発を継続していますので、ご安心ください。
— ハブ (@habumon) February 20, 2024
Loosely translated with language translator DeepL, Habumon wrote the following:
I am sorry to inform you that I am no longer in charge of producing Digimon games due to an internal personnel change.
Due to personnel changes within the company, I am no longer in charge of producing Digimon games. In fact, I was removed from the charge as of last April and have been solemnly taking over.
Please be assured that the team is continuing development of the new Digimon Story under a trusted director. I was involved in the content called Digimon, I was able to experience the passion of the fans of this work, I would like to thank all the fans who loved my work.
I would like to thank all the fans who have loved my work. Thank you very much!
Thank you for your continued support of Digimon.
For the uninitiated, Habumon is best known for being the chief producer for Digimon Survive, a visual novel tactical RPG that was released for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PC via Steam in 2022.
The game launched with success and received a generally positive review from fans and critics alike, scoring an average metascore of 70 on Metacritic.
Aside from Digimon Survive, he also helmed many other Digimon games as producer throughout his tenure, including Digimon All-Star Rumble, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, Digimon World Re:Digitize, Digimon World -next 0rder- INTERNATIONAL EDITION, and many more.
He is also responsible for bringing many Digimon creatures to life, including Spadamon for Digimon Story: Super Xros Wars Blue and Red.
Another Digimon created on his request was RustTyranomon and Titamon as designed by Kenji Watanabe for Digimon World Re:Digitize: Decode.
In a recent financial report Q&A, publisher Bandai Namco revealed that they have cancelled at least five games that was in development to help overcome the drop of income over the last year.
While Habumon did not specified that any projects he worked on had been cancelled prior to his announcement, some fans were speculating that it may part of the reason why he no longer work on Digimon games.