Gamasutra is reporting that Sonic The Hedgehog co-creator, Hirokazu Yasuhara has been hired by Nintendo of America to work in a currently undisclosed position at Nintendo Software Technology in Redmond, Washington.
While Yasuhara co-created Sonic, his departure isn't from Sega as he hasn't been employed there for years. He departed Namcom Bandai last month and his resume is lenghty and diverse. He's served as a senior designer at Naughty Dog working on both the Jak and Uncharted franchises and put together Namco's Pac-man Party mini-game compendium on the Wii in 2010.
Nintendo is of course known for the extremely hight caliber of their first-party software, so I'm very curious to see just what it is Yasuhara is working on. The Wii U is the hottest topic in relation to the firm right now and I remain unimpressed myself (with both the rumors and confirmations). I imagine Yasuhara is a lead on a project for that, but that's purely my own speculation.