tri-Ace, Incorporated (株式会社トライエース, Kabushiki Gaisha Toraiēsu?) is a Japanese video game development company formed in 1995 by former Telenet Japan employees Yoshiharu Gotanda (programmer, current tri-Ace President), Masaki Norimoto (game designer,) and Joe Asanuma (director). The name is a play on words regarding the "three aces" who formed the company.
The group exclusively makes console RPGs, and is known for giving their games action-packed battle systems and deep skill systems. This trademark style began when
the founders of tri-Ace originally worked for Telenet Japan's Wolfteam, and had created Tales of Phantasia. This game, published by Namco, is a precursor to tri-Ace's own Star Ocean games in several ways; i.e. an action battle system where the player controls one character and AI controls others in
the party and special battle skills that the player can assign to different buttons. (Radiata Stories is the latest
example of this design.) Besides the Star Ocean series, they also released Valkyrie Profile in 1999. Their most recent release (as of October 2006) is Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, released in the United States by Square Enix on September 26th, 2006.
While all of their games have been published by Square Enix (originally by Enix), tri-Ace revealed during a special gaming conference held April 6, 2006,that they are currently developing a role-playing
game exclusively for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, which was titled the following September as Infinite Undiscovery.
The company's sound programmer Hiroya Hatsushiba formed tri-Crescendo in 1999 which has since independently developed Baten Kaitos.