Media.Vision has not worked on a Shining game since the release of Resonance on PS3 in 2014. They had a steady release schedule up till March 2018 when it stopped. Since April 2018 they expanded staff to 132 people.
Since July 2018 they were looking for a in-house character designer who can properly draw people. They are looking for someone who has various tastes of illustration production experience. In other words they are not interested in manga/anime artists who can barely draw people. Manga/anime is fantasy art style.
Wild Arms series director, Nobukazu Satoh, is president of Media.Vision today. Tetsuya Okubo has basically taking over his role in game development when other collegues practiced on smaller projects as directors like Summon Night 6, Valkyria Revolution, Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memory and VC4.
It was already in the plans back in 2010 they had to go global in the future when the time is right. PS3/PSP era wasn't the right time, neither was PS4 era.
There is a reason why Sega went to O-Two inc to remaster Resonance. It's getting more important for companies to start think of their in-house talent over outsourcing. Capcom has built that up over the years. Square Enix seems to go in the same path recently. Sega is not shy with improving Sonic Team's quality with assistance from Ryu ga Gotoku Studio on New Sakura Wars.
But if they bring back Shining someday Sega's new president realize it has to be made in-house with a new character designer to reach quality.
