The story
Omega Force was founded in 1996 as the fourth Business Division of Koei to widen the appeal of Koei's portfolio outside of their strategy and simulation games such as Romance of Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's Ambition. Kenichi Ogasawara originally joined Koei in hopes of being able to work on Nobunaga's Ambition, of which he was a fan, as a planner. Due to his lack of programming skills, he was assigned to a training course to become a programmer whilst porting games from NEC PC-9801 to the Super NES. Ogasawara, after being promoted to planner, was then tasked by Koei to create a 3D action game using the technological capabilities of the PlayStation. This resulted in the development of Dynasty Warriors and the establishment of Omega Force.
The studio was originally going to be named after the letter Z, but this idea never came to fruition as the letter Z can have different meanings outside of Japanese culture. Wanting to keep the last letter of the alphabet, they settled for Omega from the Greek alphabet; however, due to copyright concerns with the clock manufacturing company Omega SA, Force was added – a Japanese homophone for "fourth" – representing that they are the fourth business division.
WinBack, released in 1999 for the Nintendo 64, pioneered the cover-based third-person shooter and inspired games such as Kill Switch, Gears of War, and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. It also featured an early rendition of a laser sight mechanic for weapon aiming, which would later be seen in games like Resident Evil 4. The cover system has since become a staple of the third-person shooter genre. With WinBack, which was originally shown off at the 1999 Electronic Entertainment Expo and later at the 1999 Nintendo Space World trade show, Omega Force was once again tasked by Koei to create a title it wasn't known for.
In 2016, Kenichi Ogasawara mentioned during an interview with Famitsu that the next entry in their key franchise Dynasty Warriors, titled Dynasty Warriors 9, was in development. He hoped to have a greater impact with Dynasty Warriors 9, as he mentioned "the evolution from Dynasty Warriors 7 to 8 was insufficient". Producers Masaki Furusawa and Akihiro Suzuki planned to overhaul the franchise's often criticized combat system. In 2018, Omega Force released Dynasty Warriors 9, moving the franchise from its arena-based combat to an open-world.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, the third collaboration project between Omega Force and Nintendo, released in 2020 and quickly became the best-selling Warriors game as well as the developer's best-selling title, shipping over 4 million copies as of January 2022.
In 2022, Omega Force announced a partnership with Electronic Arts, along with its parent company Koei Tecmo. Their new game, Wild Hearts, would be published under their EA Originals label. The game was officially announced on September 23, 2022. Wild Hearts' director, Kotaro Hirata, mentioned that Dynasty Warriors has become a pillar franchise for Omega Force, and that with Wild Hearts they wanted another strong pillar franchise for Omega Force, hoping to widen their audience and create more internationally appealing titles. EA's Andrew Wilson mentioned in an investor meeting that the success of Monster Hunter led to EA greenlighting the title.
From Wikipedia’s article on Omega Force, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4