Toshihiro Nagoshi,a long-time SEGA developer famous for Sega Rally, Monkey Ball and the Yakuzaseries, is in the final stages of negotiating a deal to leave the Japanese house and join Chinese company NetEase,according to a report from Bloomberg.

Nagoshi joined SEGA in 1989 and has worked on numerous titles, from Daytona to Virtua Fighter to F-Zero GX. But surely his most successful saga is Yakuza, which now includes eight chapters and a series of spin-offs that have made him famous especially in the West as head of the Ryu Ga Gotoku studio.

Bloomberg states that although he"has not signed a definitive agreement and his duties have yetto be defined", he is going to "create his own development team and create new games". It is speculated that this is a move by NetEase to respond to rival Tencent,which in recent years has spent a lot to acquire several developers such as Riot,creators of League of Legends,and more recently, Platinum Games and Sumo Group.

While Nagoshi's departure probably won't have a direct impact on any of the series he's been working on recently, since they all belong to SEGA and are made by great teams of developers, it would still be a blow to fans and SEGA itself to see a man responsible for so many of the biggest hits of the last 30 years leave for a rival organization.

However, his departure is not surprising; Earlier this year Nagoshi resigned from Sega's board of directors and his role as the company's Chief Creative Officer, likely pushed by the company itself after some comments made about Esportsplayers.