Falcom Founder and Chairman Has Died at Age 78

Summary

• Masayuki Kato, founder of Nihon Falcom, passed away at 78, leaving a storied legacy in the RPG genre.
• Nihon Falcom, known for JRPGs like The Legend of Heroes series, started in 1981 as a PC game producer.
• Kato’s passing marks the loss of a critical figure in the gaming industry, but Nihon Falcom’s legacy lives on.

The founder and chairman of acclaimed Japanese game developer Nihon Falcom, Masayuki Kato, has reportedly died at the age of 78 on December 15, leaving behind a storied legacy in the role-playing game genre. Kato was not only the founder of the company, he served as the active chairman of Nihon Falcom developer’s board of directors up until the time of his death.

Falcom is the studio behind hit JRPG franchises like The Legend of Heroes series and is one of the oldest in the industry, having begun in 1981 as a producer of Japanese personal computer video games. The company is known for its work in the action RPG genre, publishing a wide variety of video games in the 1980s before it went on to become an independent developer of its own.

News of the death of Nihon Falcom’s founder, Masayuki Kato, surfaced via a Japanese blog post on the company’s official website honoring the late chairman along with a slight restructure underway to make up for the loss. Given his status as the company’s founder and the pioneering force behind the action JRPG genre, Kato’s sudden passing means the loss of a critical figure for the company and the gaming industry as a whole.

While Nihon Falcom largely gained traction in its early days as a PC game producer, with its company name reportedly meant to reference the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, it eventually threw console games into the mix as well. By the early 2000s, the company brought its games to a larger audience on the PlayStation 2 and PSP, quickly gaining a foothold in the West where it continues to thrive today.

However, the late Kato’s involvement with the company took on more of an advisory role by this point, as he stepped down as the president of Nihon Falcom in 2001 in favor of a role as the chairman of its board of directors. There, he served as a key producer and consultant on some of Falcom’s most popular games, most notably its action RPGs like the acclaimed Ys series.

Nihon Falcom has continued its legacy as one of the oldest RPG makers in the gaming industry since its founding in the early 1980s, and its most famous franchises continue to find success to this day. Its most recent title was the highly-rated action JRPG Ys 10: Nordics, which launched in 2023, and a sequel to the most recent entry in The Legend of Heroes series is set to launch in February of next year.