Sora is a Japanese video game developer founded by Masahiro Sakurai. The company works with other development companies as to develop games with Masahiro Sakurai being a designer and mainly a director, while Michiko Sakurai is one of the responsible for the UI design of the games.
Sora was built as an agency that would contract Masahiro Sakurai as a freelance video game designer to different companies. His first project under Sora was Meteos with Q Entertainment. Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata hired Sakurai, someone he had worked with at HAL Laboratory, to work on Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Development was supported by various other studios, including Game Arts and Monolith Soft.
On 18 February 2009, Nintendo announced the formation of Project Sora, a subsidiary created to develop a new video game which would be directed by Sakurai. The development group was located in Iidabashi, Tokyo. The company was officially formed on 22 January 2009, with capital of 200 million ¥, of which 72% was provided by Nintendo and the remainder by Sora Ltd. and other parties. Sakurai served as the company’s president. The studio began development of Kid Icarus: Uprising with a staff of 30 developers (most of whom were recruits Nintendo hired for the development of Super Smash Bros. Brawl), with more staff being recruited during the development process. Kid Icarus: Uprising was released in March 2012 for the Nintendo 3DS. Project Sora ceased operations on June 30, 2012.