Hiroya Hatsushiba (JP:初芝弘也) is the founder of tri-Crescendo,[1] and a long time sound programmer for composer Motoi Sakuraba.
Hatsushiba came up as a sound director and programmer for the Telenet Japan subsidiary Wolfteam in 1993. It is here that he met Sakuraba; these two have worked together on various games since then.
He was one of the many people that left Telenet Japan on March 6, 1995 to participate in the founding of tri-Ace. Here, he continued his sound programmer duties for Sakuraba, as well as doing some field programming.
In 1999, he left tri-Ace and formed tri-Crescendo. While initially continuing to provide sound programming for tri-Ace's games, tri-Crescendo moved into game development in 2001. Hatsushiba partnered up with Monolith Soft to develop Baten Kaitos, which became one of the more successful games for GameCube. Developmental duties have continued for its sequel, as well as the recent Eternal Sonata.