Takeshi Otsuka joins N3twork

San Francisco studio N3twork has a new addition to the team, mobile gaming specialist Takeshi Otsuka. He joins the company from DeNA.

"Takeshi's extensive experience as a project leader coupled with the quality of his character makes him the perfect addition to our growing team as we explore the future of mobile and ultra-mobile games, and advance the state of the art in both game design and the business of games," said CEO Neil Young.

"He grew up in and around the mobile revolution in Japan and has been an innovator throughout his career, establishing many of the game mechanics that have since become industry standards in the Japanese mobile gaming space. He took that unique experience and helped hundreds of other developers in Japan as Director of DeNA's hugely successful Mobage Open Platform, bringing more than 500 third party games from Japan's best developers to Mobage's Kaito Royale fueled audience in just six months."

We spoke to N3twork back in February as the company, founded by Ngmoco creators Young, Alan Yu and Bob Stevenson, announced it was turning its attention back to the games industry after a break focusing on video.

"The lessons learned in that Japanese market, the experience of the Japanese market is really relevant, it is not some strange archipelago where things develop completely weirdly. There are humans that live there," said Young at the time.