Code Like It's 198x

Q Entertainment

The studio Tetsuya Mizuguchi founded after Sega, home of Lumines

Companies & StudiosSource-checked

Q Entertainment was the Tokyo studio that Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Shuji Utsumi set up in October 2003, after Mizuguchi left Sega. Its first game, Lumines, launched with the PSP in Japan in 2004, and it went on to make Meteos, Every Extend Extra, Rez HD and Child of Eden. Mizuguchi and Utsumi had both left by 2014, and in 2015 the Lumines and Meteos rights were sold on.

When Tetsuya Mizuguchi left Sega in October 2003, the team that had made Rez and Space Channel 5 was being folded into Sonic Team. He started again with a new company, Q Entertainment, and a new kind of machine. Its first two games were falling-block puzzles for the handhelds that Sony and Nintendo were about to launch, and the first of them, Lumines, became what Edge called “the only completely original PSP launch title”. Over the next eight years Q carried Mizuguchi’s idea of games that feel like music through puzzles, a shooter built from a freeware PC game, a high-definition Rez and Child of Eden, a shooter played with a Kinect camera.

Fast facts

  • Founded: October 2003, in Tokyo (its head office was in Meguro in 2009), by Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Shuji Utsumi. The company’s own profile gives October 2003; some reference works give 2004.
  • Management: Utsumi as chief executive, Mizuguchi as chief creative officer.
  • Main games: Lumines (PSP, 2004), Meteos (DS, 2005), Every Extend Extra (PSP, 2006), Ninety-Nine Nights (Xbox 360, 2006, with Phantagram), Rez HD (Xbox 360, 2008), Child of Eden (Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, 2011), Lumines Electronic Symphony (PS Vita, 2012).
  • Later: Mizuguchi and Utsumi had both left by early 2014; the Lumines and Meteos rights were sold in January 2015.

From Sega to the handhelds

Hyper summed up the start in early 2005: after Rez, Mizuguchi “left Sega to start his own development studio called Q Entertainment”, which had two puzzle games in development, Lumines for the PSP and Meteos for the Nintendo DS. His partner, Shuji Utsumi, ran the business as chief executive while Mizuguchi took the title of chief creative officer.

Lumines came out alongside the PSP in Japan at the end of 2004, published by Bandai. It is a falling-block puzzle in which a “timeline” sweeps across the screen in time with the music, clearing matched blocks as it passes, and each set of stages changes the song and the look. Edge gave it eight out of ten. Around the same time Q announced a label with Bandai for PSP and DS games, ((qb)), or Quest Beat, meant to combine the handhelds with “new game experiences and collaborations with artists from genres outside of the videogame industry”. Mizuguchi told Edge that Q was “not a handheld-only development company — it’s just at the moment we happen to be working on a handheld platform”, and that he wanted to reach players who “just want to play games with joy”.

Meteos was the second puzzle game. Mizuguchi hired Masahiro Sakurai, the designer of the Kirby games and Super Smash Bros. Melee, who had resigned in 2003 to work freelance. Sakurai told Edge that Mizuguchi phoned him and asked him “to come up with a puzzle game” as soon as he went freelance. Hyper noted that on Meteos Mizuguchi took more of a producer’s role, working with Nintendo on a game built around the DS’s two screens and stylus.

Growing up

The third game had a surprising origin. Every Extend Extra (2006) grew out of Every Extend, a freeware PC shoot-’em-up by a developer called Omega in which the player’s ship blows itself up to set off chain reactions. Q rebuilt it around a rhythm, with the flow of enemies following the music, and Edge gave the PSP game eight out of ten. In the long interview that accompanied the review, Mizuguchi described the study of how stimulation triggers emotion as “my life’s work”.

Q also began to take on bigger projects. Ninety-Nine Nights (2006), a fantasy battle game for the Xbox 360 published by Microsoft, was made with the Korean studio Phantagram, and Edge saw it as the moment Q “revealed its intention to move out of the boutique”. A sequel, made with feelplus and published by Konami, followed in 2010. The puzzles kept coming too: sequels and an Xbox Live Arcade version of Lumines, a Disney edition of Meteos, and Gunpey, a continuation of a puzzle game originally made in tribute to the Game Boy’s designer, Gunpei Yokoi. In 2008 Q brought Rez itself back as Rez HD for Xbox Live Arcade. A true sequel was another matter: Mizuguchi had told Edge in 2006 that it “would require Sega’s approval as the company owns the IP”.

Child of Eden

Child of Eden (2011), published by Ubisoft, was the spiritual sequel to Rez: a rail shooter in which every shot adds to the music, played either with a controller or by waving at Microsoft’s Kinect camera. Mizuguchi started it, he told Edge, by writing a 40-page memo “like a poem”, which everyone at Q read, and in 2011 he called it “a music shooter, a synaesthesia shooter”. A year later Edge judged it the first action game to “conquer” Kinect, because keeping the action on rails let the player concentrate on shooting instead of steering.

The last major Lumines from Q, Lumines Electronic Symphony, came out on the PS Vita in 2012. Asked by Edge that year why Q made games, Utsumi answered: “We want to entertain people. We always try to convey feelings of peacefulness, happiness and optimism. We are strongly biased to music when we design games.”

After Mizuguchi

In March 2014 Game Informer and VideoGamer, following a report by CVG that cited an unnamed source inside the company, reported that Mizuguchi had quietly left Q Entertainment the year before, and that Utsumi had also gone after an outside company bought the studio’s shares. Mizuguchi founded a new company, Enhance, in the United States in October 2014. In January 2015 the mobile company Mobcast and Enhance acquired the Lumines and Meteos properties from Q Entertainment, with a new Lumines planned for smartphones. Enhance has since made Rez Infinite and Tetris Effect, and in 2025 a new Lumines; the Tetsuya Mizuguchi entry follows that story.

Sources

  • Edge issue 146, February 2005, p. 74: Lumines review (PSP, Bandai/Q Entertainment, “the only completely original PSP launch title”, eight out of ten). Same issue: PSP feature with an interview with Mizuguchi on Q Entertainment and ((qb)) (Quest Beat), the label with Bandai.
  • Hyper (Australia) issue 135, January 2005, p. 89: Q Entertainment founded by Mizuguchi after Rez; Lumines and Meteos in development; Mizuguchi as producer on Meteos.
  • Edge issue 149, May 2005: interview with Masahiro Sakurai on designing Meteos for Q Entertainment (his resignation in 2003 and freelance career; both of Q’s first games falling-block puzzles for new handhelds).
  • Edge issue 156, December 2005: Every Extend Extra preview (Bandai, Q Entertainment; based on Omega’s freeware PC game Every Extend).
  • Edge issue 158, January 2006, and issue 163, June 2006: Ninety-Nine Nights (Xbox 360, Microsoft Game Studios, Phantagram/Q Entertainment).
  • Edge issue 166, September 2006: Gunpey preview (PSP and DS, Namco Bandai, Q Entertainment); Ninety-Nine Nights as the move “out of the boutique”; Lumines sequels and Meteos: Disney Edition.
  • Edge issue 167, October 2006, pp. 64–68 and p. 86: interview with Mizuguchi (“my life’s work”, the Rez rights) and Every Extend Extra review (Omega’s original, the rhythm of the enemy waves, eight out of ten).
  • Edge issue 182, December 2007, p. 40: Rez HD preview (Xbox 360, Q Entertainment).
  • Edge issue 218, September 2010: Ninety-Nine Nights 2 review (Konami, Q Entertainment/feelplus).
  • Edge issue 221, December 2010, pp. 56–62, and issue 229, July 2011, p. 112: Child of Eden (Ubisoft, Kinect, the 40-page memo, “a music shooter, a synaesthesia shooter”).
  • Edge issue 243, August 2012: Kinect feature (Child of Eden as the first action game to succeed on Kinect).
  • Edge issue 244, September 2012, p. 69: Shuji Utsumi, co-founder and CEO of Q Entertainment, on why Q makes games (Lumines, Lumines Electronic Symphony, Child of Eden).
  • NHN Japan and Q Entertainment, joint press release, 11 August 2009 (web; the company’s own statement): Q Entertainment established in October 2003, Utsumi as CEO and Mizuguchi as CCO, head office in Meguro, Tokyo. https://www.lycorp.co.jp/news/archive/L/ja/ja20090811_A.pdf
  • Game Informer, “Report: Co-Founder Tetsuya Mizuguchi Leaves Q Entertainment”, 17 March 2014 (web, secondary; reporting CVG’s unnamed source). https://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2014/03/17/report-co-founder-tetsuya-mizuguchi-leaves-q-entertainment.aspx
  • VideoGamer, “Mizuguchi leaves Q Entertainment – Report”, March 2014 (web, secondary; reporting the same CVG story). https://www.videogamer.com/news/mizuguchi-leaves-q-entertainment-report/
  • Gematsu, “Mobcast and Enhance Games acquire Lumines and Meteos properties”, 26 January 2015 (web, secondary). https://www.gematsu.com/2015/01/mobcast-enhance-games-acquire-lumines-meteos-ips
  • Engadget, “Lumines changes hands, returning on iOS and Android”, 28 January 2015 (web, secondary): Mizuguchi co-founded Q Entertainment in 2003 after leaving Sega; Mobcast’s acquisition. https://www.engadget.com/2015-01-28-lumines-changes-hands-returning-on-ios-and-android.html
  • Enhance, company information (accessed September 2026) (web): Enhance established in the United States in October 2014. https://enhance-experience.com/about/

See also

Checked. Verified against primary sources and signed off by a person.