The team that developed games like Gravity Rush and Knack hadn’t released hits in recent years, and so Sony decided not to renew contracts with its employees. Contradictions arose between Sony and Japan Studio, its first internal game development studio, according to VGC. Japan Studio wanted to create games aimed primarily at the Japanese market, while Sony hoped the team would create worldwide hits.
As a result, they decided to disband most of Japan Studio. According to sources, Sony came to this conclusion a year ago, when instead of Allan Becker, who led Japan Studio for a long time, it appointed Nicolas Doucet, the game director of Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, as the head of the team.
After that, several employees left Japan Studio at once, including the producers of Bloodborne Masaaki Yamagiva and Teruyuki Toriyama, the producer of The Last Guardian Kazunoba Sato, and the lead designer of Gravity Rush Zuni Okura.
Sony Japan Studio was founded in 1993 and has developed games such as Gravity Rush, LocoRoco, Ape Escape, and Knack. The studio also helped create Bloodborne, The Last Guardian, Everybody’s Golf, and the Demon’s Souls remake.
If you are a fan of older games and played some of the Japan Studio ones, you might perceive this news in a negative way. But we have something for you: download ROMs of retro games and play any time you want. It is a great possibility to remember the good old days.
The Beginning of the End
According to VGC sources, Sony did not renew contracts with many of Japan Studio’s employees and let them leave. Some of the employees, including the localization and business development departments, will be transferred to ASOBI, the Astro Bot developer studio. The External Development Department, which helped create games like the Demon’s Souls remake, will continue to work.
The fact is that Sony with the release of the PS5 is more and more focused on the Western market and pays less attention to Japan. However, the head of PlayStation Jim Ryan has repeatedly denied these claims.
Main developers leaving
Teruyuki Toriyama announces his resignation from SIE Japan Studio in December 2020. He left Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan Studio at the end of December, as he tweeted. According to the producer, he will continue to work on new IPs at another company. Where exactly Toriyama would go was not specified.
At SIE Japan Studio, he has produced Bloodborne, Demon’s Souls Remake, and Soul Sacrifice. Previously, Japan Studio was also left by the original Silent Hill game director Keiichiro Toyama. Together with him, two other top workers left the company: Kazunobu Sato (producer of The Last Guardian) and Junya Okura (designer of Siren and Gravity Rush). The developers founded Bokeh Game Studio to work on their own franchises. The studio’s first game should be an action-adventure game with horror elements. The debut project of Bokeh Game Studio is due out in 2023.
Second Bloodborne Producer Masaaki Yamagiva also left SIE Japan Studio in February. The developer announced his departure on Twitter. In addition to Bloodborne, while at SIE Japan Studio, he managed to work on Deracine and Tokyo Jungle.
In March, Shunsuke Saito — character designer and animator for Gravity Rush and Gravity Rush 2, and art director for Gravity Rush 2 — left Japan Studio. This is reported by the Gematsu portal with a link to the developer’s official Twitter.
Facts About Closing Sony Japan Studio
Overall, there are several main reasons that can be grouped in the following way:
- Sony should never do anything with low efficiency now, and Japan Studio was completely unprofitable;
- Still, Japan Studio released games at a level much higher than any by Nintendo in terms of budget, risk, development time, and the number of people on the teams;
- But these games, due to their level, development time, the number of people in the team, and so on, did not pay off and it is quite logical that Sony saves as much as possible in the context of such aggression;
- In fact, if Microsoft continued to play fair, Japan Studio would now exist;
- Japan Studio has not released any of the major world-class games and there was not a single sufficiently financially successful game in recent years.
So, this decision seems to be relevant and long-awaited. Many famous developers are now working in other studios and we should wait for the new hits from them.