PlayStation Removes Japan Studio from List of Studios - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 05 August 2021 / 1,836 Views
Sony Interactive Entertainment on the official PlayStation Studios page that lists the different first-party studios has officially removed Japan Studio.
Japan Studio was the fourth first-party developer listed, which can be seen via the Internet Archive. Team Asobi, the developer of Astro's Playroom, has taken Japan Studio's place in the list of developers.
Sony re-organized Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan Studio on April 1 with a massive layoff. However, Team Asobi remained as an a standalone studio, while the localization and business employees also remain.
"In an effort to further strengthen business operations, SIE can confirm PlayStation Studios JAPAN Studio will be re-organized into a new organization on April 1," said Sony in a statement at the time. "JAPAN Studio will be re-centered to Team ASOBI, the creative team behind Astro's Playroom, allowing the team to focus on a single vision and build on the popularity of Astro’s Playroom.
"In addition, the roles of external production, software localization, and IP management of JAPAN Studio titles will be concentrated within the global functions of PlayStation Studios."
Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan Studio's Gavin Moore as part of the closures left the company after 24 years. He was the director for Puppeteer and Demon’s Souls remake.
"After 24 years at Sony and 18 of those in Japan, yesterday was my last day at Japan Studio," Moore said at the time. "I will miss the great creative spirit and camaraderie of the studio that was a huge part of my life. Time to seek out new and exciting opportunities!"
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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RIP Gravity rush, Ape escape, Patapon, and Team ICO. You will be missed and never forgotten.
It doesn’t mean much. Sony also owns the IPs of Crime Crackers, G-Police, Jumping Flash and Colony Wars, essentially game series that were made and ended in the PS1 era. But I guess some of Japan Studio games can have sequels to mobile platforms from Forwardworks (like Arc the Lad R). As for a real PS5 game, it’s highly unlikely. I can only hope for an Ico remake by Bluepoint. They did a remaster of Ico and SotC before and also worked on Shadow of the Colossus remake so there’s a chance.
like Vendrom said it doesn't mean much , and we need to be pragmatic, while those games were great they are products of their time, I'm sure Sony and many others with PS1 era IP and later would have looked at their back catalogue but unfortunately the vast majority of games or franchises don't continue across the generations.
For many it's simply that their genre is no longer popular or the money and effort to build a new game means they are better allocating that budget elsewhere on new or existing IP .
If we use the games mentioned as a test case while being well liked and selling enough to gain sequels, they were midrange sellers and the optimal time for a continuation has long gone and the intervening decades and multiple gens since means they now have pretty much a non existent profile among todays gamers.
so any business case is already on shaky grounds before we even get to the headache inducing task of creating a product that can accommodate the best of modern gaming while still retaining the DNA at the core of the original game, so it' becomes more than just a game in name only.
Even if you could demonstrate a case showing the game being capable of reaching the envisioned standard , you still have the financial aspect involving production and promotion costs weighed against potential sales and the cost benefit of spending that money on competing products elsewhere to overcome.
if you consider how hard and rare it is to even resurrect games with timelines
that sit much closer to the current gen what becomes clear is Sony isn't doomed
but these games futures are DOOMED,
Why would it keep listed?
:(
To be fair the studio was a relic and didn't produce too many great things during the PS3/PS4 era aside from Astro and Gravity Rush. This restructuring might be good to get the studio back on track. They should have kept a bigger part of its employees around for making Astro into PlayStation is mascot.
Probably everyone that could be a good fit for team Asobi was kept (and Astros Room is a very good game and well accepted). The people that were let go probably wouldnt adapt to what Sony vision is for the studio going forward.
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