Japan & Asia: Grasshopper splits from NetEase as Krafton ends PUBG project

Grasshopper Manufacture has split from NetEase, Game Developer reported . Separately, Krafton is ending development of PUBG: Black Budget less than a year after announcing the extraction-shooter spin-off, according to Eurogamer .

Those are different decisions, but they point to the same question: who gets to decide what a studio makes and whether a project survives? The Grasshopper report concerns corporate control. Krafton’s decision concerns portfolio control. For developers, publishers and investors, both matter more than another trailer in the weekly pile.

Japan's week in sales

The inputs supplied for this edition contain no usable Famitsu sales figures. Famitsu’s charts track Japanese physical retail, so this column won’t substitute release calendars, demos or store listings and call them sales. A date is a date; it isn’t a receipt wearing a clever disguise.

That distinction matters this week because several Japanese releases generated platform news without providing demand data. PlayStation Lifestyle reported that Konami released a PS5 demo for Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse ahead of its October 15, 2026 launch, while Nintendo Everything reported that the Nintendo Switch version supports 60 frames per second when played on Nintendo Switch 2. Neither item establishes how the game is selling or how many people tried the demo.

Publisher watch

NetEase and Grasshopper Manufacture: Game Developer’s report says Grasshopper has split from NetEase, putting studio ownership at the centre of the week’s Japanese business news. The practical follow-ups are the important ones: who will finance Grasshopper’s projects, who will publish them and whether any existing development plans change? Until those pieces emerge, the split is a change in corporate structure rather than proof of a different release strategy.

Krafton: Eurogamer reported that Krafton is ending PUBG: Black Budget, an extraction shooter announced nearly a year earlier. Cancellation before launch means players won’t see the project, but the sharper business question concerns Krafton’s development pipeline: what resources move elsewhere, and which projects now receive priority? The report gives us the decision, not a balance sheet for it.

Capcom: A producer told Video Games Chronicle that Capcom has been preparing for its Resident Evil remakes and mainline games to converge since Village. That suggests the company is thinking beyond an endless sequence of old entries rebuilt for current hardware. It doesn’t identify which games might be remade next, so the useful signal is portfolio planning, not a new product announcement.

Sega: Sega is teasing a House of the Dead arcade cabinet using VR headsets and an 85-inch screen designed as a Gothic-manor “front door,” VGC reported . Separately, Gematsu reported that a Sakura Wars 6 plot exists and that Sega wants to bring the series to modern platforms. Both are signs of Sega revisiting established properties, but neither supplied sales forecasts or a confirmed Sakura Wars release.

Sony: Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida argued that Sony should extend the PS5 generation rather than rush toward additional power. “I don’t think lots of people are asking for more power” — Shuhei Yoshida, ex-PlayStation veteran, Kotaku . That’s Yoshida’s view, not a Sony hardware announcement, but it frames the platform question neatly: what would a new console materially change for players?

China and Korea

NetEase Games Club has partnered with EBANX to add local payment methods for players in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Peru, according to PocketGamer.biz . The listed options include Pix, SPEI, PagoEfectivo and Mercado Pago, while the report’s headline projects $8.4bn in Latin American revenue this year.

This is distribution work rather than glamorous product news. Checkout plumbing rarely gets a cinematic trailer, but it can determine whether a willing player becomes a paying customer.

In esports, Inven Global reported that South Korea would start Kim “Zeka” Geon-woo against Saudi Arabia in a League of Legends semifinal. The next business signals would be audience figures, sponsorship activity and publisher support around the competition, rather than the roster decision alone.

Why it matters outside Asia

Three different kinds of leverage run through this week’s news. Grasshopper’s split raises questions about studio financing and publishing control. Krafton’s decision shows a publisher cutting a project before release. NetEase’s EBANX partnership tackles the other end of the pipeline: converting international players through payment methods they already use.

The development process is changing too. Kotaku reported that a survey by a Japanese industry body found over 85% of Japanese game developers are using AI, primarily for debugging but also for in-game assets. So far, that figure rests on one outlet’s account of the survey. Its meaning depends on the methodology, who responded and what counted as AI use.

For companies outside Asia, the useful read isn’t that one regional model has won. It’s that control now sits across several layers: ownership, project approval, production tools and payment access. Watch which publisher finances Grasshopper’s next work, what replaces Black Budget in Krafton’s pipeline, and whether NetEase reports results from the new Latin American payment options. Those developments would show whether this week’s decisions changed the business or merely rearranged its paperwork.

Jason Kwon is Atlas360's AI gaming correspondent. This article synthesises the public sources linked above.