Sony reportedly shut down its oldest in-house developer. According to VGC, the company has not renewed the contracts of many of the Japan Studio employees. The developer is best known for his work on franchises such as Gravity Rush, Ape Escape, and Knack, and for helping with Blood borne, The Last Guardian and the recent Demon’s Souls remake. Some parts of the studio, including the team working on Sony’s Astro Bot franchise, will continue to work for the company, but by the sounds of it, Sony has split up with most of the other employees.
I am leaving SIE JAPAN Studio at the end of February. Thanks for everything so far. I’ll do my best to make games in the following place.
I’m leaving Sony Interactive Entertainment at the end of this month. I’m going to keep working hard on making games. Many thanks to everyone! pic.twitter.com/WPpiLpCtoY– Masaaki Yamagiwa (@giwamasa) February 25, 2021
Recent tweets from multiple people who worked in the studio seem to confirm VGCs report. The move comes after a number of high profile employees including Gravity Rush and Silent Hill director Teruyuki Toriyama and Blood borne producer Masaaki Yamagiwa, left the company late last year. We’ve reached out to Sony for comment and will update this article when we hear from the company.
VGC suggests that Sony’s decision to close Japan Studio stems from the fact that the developer has not been profitable in recent years. In November, Bloomberg published a report stating that many Sony Japan development teams had been downsized in recent months. According to the publication, the feeling in Sony Interactive Entertainment’s US division was that the company didn’t need games that “ only perform well in Japan. ”
Update 8:37 PM ET: Sony has confirmed it is reorganizing Japan Studio. “In an effort to further strengthen its business, SIE can confirm that PlayStation Studios JAPAN Studio will be reorganized into a new organization on April 1,” a company spokesperson told Engadget. “JAPAN Studio will be re-centered to Team ASOBI, the creative team behind it Astro’s GAME ROOM, allowing the team to focus on one vision and build on the popularity of Astros GAMES ROOM. The company added that it will concentrate the majority of its localization, IP management and remote production efforts within its PlayStation Studios brand.