Early in tri-Crescendo's existence, the company looked to expand its portfolio beyond audio work for tri-Ace games. These plans included Sakuraba being the main composer. The company struck a deal with another young development house called Monolith Soft, and the two worked to co-develop
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean for Nintendo's Gamecube in 2003. A prequel followed,
Baten Kaitos Origins, in 2006.
Eternal Sonata came the following year for the Xbox 360, and also to Playstation 3 a year later. tri-Ace also developed and released an all new game,
Infinite Undiscovery for Xbox 360.
tri-Crescendo did not abandon their original partner. Technically, Sakuraba did
Star Ocean 3 through tri-Crescendo, and this arrangement would continue until
Star Ocean: The Last Hope on Xbox 360 and PS3. Between the Star Oceans, tri-Ace found the time to develop a sequel to
Valkyrie Profile for the Playstation 2,
Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, which was released in 2005. Another Valkyrie Profile game would release on the Playstation Portable in the same year,
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth and in 2008,
Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume was released for Nintendo's DS .
Camelot was kept busy with more Mario Golf and Tennis games, which would continue unabated until they made
We Love Golf! for the Nintendo Wii in 2007. Another Mario Tennis game followed for the Wii in 2009 before the company revisted the Golden Sun series with a third installment
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn in 2010 for the Nintendo DS. After that game, they moved on to the 3DS and Wii U for more Tennis and Golf featuring Mario characters. This relationship with Nintendo led to Sakuraba being brought into other Nintendo projects, namely the Super Smash Bros. series. He only did arrangements for
Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii and
Smash 4 on the 3DS and Wii U. He worked alongside a star-studded group of composers for
Kid Icarus: Uprising, with a team that featured Yuzo Koshiro, Masafumi Takada, Yasunori Mitsuda, and Noriyuki Iwadare.
Meanwhile, back in 2004, Namco Tales Studio was still working on new games in the series. After the international success of
Tales of Symphonia, the team released another 2D Tales game on the Playstation 2,
Tales of Rebirth, a game still exclusive to Japan. The following year, a new 3D Tales would release for the same system,
Tales of the Abyss; this one was released in North America, and later released internationally on the 3DS. A couple more Japan exclusive Tales games would follow,
Tales of Eternia Online for PC and
Tales of the Tempest for the DS. The next internationally released Tales game would be
Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology for the PSP, but none of its sequels would release outside of Japan.
The Tales Studio moved onto a new generation of consoles, with a new
Tales of Symphonia releasing for Nintendo's Wii,
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World in 2008. A new Tales game would release for the Xbox 360 in the same year,
Tales of Vesperia, and another handheld Tales would also release in 2008,
Tales of Hearts for the DS. An upgraded version,
Tales of Hearts R, would release for the Playstation Vita in 2013, and a Tales fighting game was released for the PSP in 2009,
Tales of VS. Tales of Graces would release on the 360 in 2009 as well, and marked the last Tales release on a Microsoft console.
Tales of Graces f would release the following year on the Playstation 3 internationally, and all new releases until
Tales of Zestiria's PC release would be exclusive to Sony systems.
In 2011,
Tales of Xillia released on Sony's Playstation 3 to international critical and commercial success. A sequel followed in 2012. A crossover beat-em-up called
Tales of the Heroes: Twin Brave came out late in the life of the PSP in 2012. After the second Xillia game, the Tales Studio released HD remakes of both Symphonia games and released them in one package called
Tales of Symphonia Chronicles.
Sakuraba also did compositions for a small number of tracks or the entire game, for games from all kinds of different developers in recent years. Konami hired him for arrangement on
Otomedius G, and he later composed a few tracks for
Otomedius Excellent. Marvelous had him compose a few tracks for
Half-Minute Hero and
Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming. Cave had him compose the boss theme for
Deathsmiles II X. From Software hired him as the main composer for the
Dark Souls series. K2 hired him for the
Valhalla Knights series, and Sega brought Sakuraba in for
Phantasy Star Nova. He was even hired by Square Enix to record keyboard performances for
Bravely Default.
Upcoming games that Sakuraba is composing for include:
Tales of Zestiria (outside of Japan at least),
Tales of Berseria,
Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness,
God Chronicle, and
Exist Archive: The Other Side of the Sky.
