[ad_1]
Sony is ending development of original games at its longest-running lead developer Japan Studio, multiple sources told VGC.
The iconic developer behind Ape Escape, Gravity Rush and Knack has seen the vast majority of its development staff let go, the sources said, after their annual contracts were not renewed until the company’s next business year. which begins April 1.
Localization and management staff will remain in place and the ASOBI team – the group responsible for Astro Bot games – will continue as a stand-alone studio within Sony Japan, he says.
Some Japan Studio staff will join ASOBI, we were told, while others have followed Silent Hill and Gravity Rush director Keiichiro Toyama – who left Japan Studio last year – to his new studio. Bokeh.
It’s not entirely clear if the restructuring affected the studio’s external development department, which collaborated on games such as Demon’s Souls last year, but someone VGC spoke to suggested it did. would continue.
Sony Interactive Entertainment did not respond to a request for comment in time for the post.
Several Japan Studio developers have announced their departure from the company on social media in recent days, including producer Bloodborne. Masaaki yamagiwa and video manager Ryo sogabe – who both leave at the end of February – during a cryptic tweet executive producer Masami Yamamoto also hints at his departure.
It also follows the departure of several high-level studio staff. At the end of 2020, Keiichiro Toyama, director of the Silent Hill and Gravity Rush series, announced his departure to create Bokeh Game Studio. He founded this new company with his fellow Sony Japan veterans, Kazunobu Sato and Junya Okura.
Meanwhile, Bloodborne and the Demons Souls remake producer Teruyuki Toriyama has said he is leaving SIE Japan in late 2020.
People familiar with the subject told VGC that Sony Japan Studio just isn’t profitable enough in recent years; the developer initially wanted to create games that would appeal to the Japanese market in hopes of having global appeal, while PlayStation wanted the kind of global hits that its other proprietary studios are producing.
One person VGC spoke to said the fate of Japan Studio was sealed over a year ago, following the departure of its long-time chairman Allan Becker, who was replaced by the director. Astro Bot: Rescue Mission Nicolas Doucet, allegedly due to frustration with the developer. lack of hits.
Another source said it was part of PlayStation’s transfer of power from its native Japan to its new US headquarters. Since the company moved its headquarters to California in 2016, it has centralized power there, which has resulted in layoffs and restructuring at regional SIE offices.
VGC’s report corroborates a Bloomberg article from November of last year, which said Sony Japan had been “sidelined” and its development teams cut off.
PlayStation boss Jim Ryan has played down this narrative on several occasions; in December, he said Japan remains an extremely important market for Sony Interactive Entertainment.
This week Famitsu posted an interview with Ryan in which he said he considers all SIE studios important and continues to support Japanese game development for PS5.
Bloomberg’s previous report claimed that in November of last year, many creators at Japan Studio had already been informed that they would not see their renewed contracts renewed.
The U.S. PlayStation office took a critical view of the Japanese operation, the publication said, and felt that the PlayStation business did not need “ games that only perform well in Japan. ”
Responding to the Bloomberg report in November, Sony spokeswoman Natsumi Atarashi said at the time that “our domestic market remains of the utmost importance” and asserted that any suggestion that Sony was diverting its attention from Japan was incorrect. and “did not reflect the strategy of the company”. .
Speaking to VGC network partners at GamesIndustry.biz about PlayStation’s globalization efforts in 2019, Ryan said we shouldn’t expect his global studios to create games designed for specific territories in the world. to come up.
“The nature of AAA PlayStation 4 and certainly the development of PlayStation 5… We’re obviously not going to let Worldwide Studios make a game for a specific European country,” he said.
“And that could have been the case in the PSP era with Invizimals [which was popular in Spain]. I think this will be where Shuhei Yoshida’s new task [of working with indies] will come into play. If we are agile, flexible and inclusive, we can work with smaller developers to help meet the specific needs of those countries. “
Japan Studio was founded in 1993 and has created iconic PlayStation IPs like Ape Escape, Patapon, and Gravity Rush, in addition to helping other developers like FromSoftware, Bluepoint, and Q-Games.
Japan Studio is Sony Interactive Entertainment’s oldest first-party studio, with a focus on introducing new styles of play.
The developer is known for games such as Knack, LocoRoco, and Ape Escape, as well as collaborations on Bloodborne, The Last Guardian, and Everybody’s Golf. He recently worked on Demon’s Souls on PS5 with US studio Bluepoint.
SIE Japan Studio also housed Project Siren – aka Team Gravity – which had worked on the Siren and Gravity Rush series.
[ad_2]
Source link