Speakers

Ryo Watanabe is an Audio Director and Manager at Bandai Namco Studios, where he has worked since joining Namco in 2005. His work spans composition, sound design, implementation, interactive mixing, spatial audio, haptics, and large-scale audio direction. He is best known for his work on the ACE COMBAT series, including serving as Audio Director on ACE COMBAT 7: SKIES UNKNOWN and ACE COMBAT 8. Across these projects, he has led the design of immersive aerial-combat audio, real-time mixing systems, radio presentation, music integration, spatial audio, and controller haptics, while coordinating multidisciplinary teams across multiple companies. Watanabe has also contributed to a wide range of Bandai Namco titles and franchises, including THE IDOLM@STER, TEKKEN, RIDGE RACER, SOULCALIBUR, PAC-MAN, Taiko no Tatsujin, Katamari Damacy, and Denonbu. His experience covers both hands-on creation and production leadership, from composing music and designing sound effects to establishing workflows, review methods, and shared creative principles for large teams. A central theme of his work is translating abstract creative intent into practical production decisions. He has developed approaches for aligning music, sound effects, dialogue, cinematics, spatial audio, and haptics around a unified player experience, and for balancing realism, clarity, emotional impact, and gameplay feedback in complex interactive scenes. He has presented at CEDEC and IGDA Japan SIG-Audio on topics including interactive mixing, audio direction, spatial audio, Wwise, and AAA game production. His speaking history includes CEDEC 2014, 2016, 2019, and 2024, as well as GDC audio report sessions in 2018, 2019, 2024, and 2025. At CEDEC, he served for many years as a lead organizer of the sound program, contributing to its programming and overall operation. He has also participated in the Game Developers Choice Awards nomination process. Watanabe was also featured on a television program produced by NHK, Japan's public broadcaster, where he introduced the creative and technical process behind game audio production. He continues to explore how game audio can create stronger emotional and physical connections between players and interactive worlds, and how creative judgment can be made shareable and actionable across large development teams.

Presenting:

• Focus Mixing: Making the Right Sound Matter in 'ACE COMBAT 8''s Aerial Battles