Summary
Japan Studio, the beloved PlayStation developer behind icons likeApe Escapeand Gravity Rush, wasshut down in 2021. Four years later, former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has finally shed light on why.
The remnants of Japan Studio became Team Asobi, who just released the GOTY-winningAstro Bot.
“During my time, people give me credit, but one of the things I was not successful at was having a successful [live-service] game, and the other thing is I was not able to have amazingly successful games made in Japan,” Yoshida said on theSacred Symbolspodcast (as reported byVGC).
“Other thanGran Turismo, we had many great products but didn’t really have many triple-A level successful products. That became more and more important as the big games became bigger — the indies filled the gap and the double-A market seems to have disappeared.”
Former Japan Studio lead Keiichiro Toyama (ofSilent Hillfame), pitched several concepts before heleft the company in 2020, but unfortunately, all of these were rejected.
Japan Studio also co-developedBloodborne, Ico, and several other iconic games.
“Most of the IPs that Japan Studio had were in that smaller double-A sized group and the market became really difficult for these kinds of games. For example, after Gravity Rush 2, [Toyama] tried to come up with a new concept, but we were not able to greenlight any of his new concepts, even though they were really interesting.”
Yoshida explains that these ideas were rejected because they “looked like something the company wouldn’t support”. They were simply too small: PlayStation wanted big, flashy, triple-A blockbusters. However, that attitude appears to be changing with the longer development cycles leaving bigger gaps between games.
Two years ago,a presentation was leaked following the Insomniac Games hackwhich revealed that PlayStation was interested in making smaller games to start filling those gaps. It stated that one triple-A game alone could fund three mid-sized games. Unfortunately, Japan Studio no longer exists to support that new ambition, but Team Asobi is at least keeping the torch lit with hits like Astro Bot.
