Former PlayStation government Shuhei Yoshida says the market grew to become “actually troublesome” for Sony Japan Studio-style video games, which contributed to the studio’s closure.
Yoshida, who left PlayStation earlier this yr after a 30-year profession, has given a number of interviews about his time at PlayStation. The newest comes from the Sacred Symbols PlayStation Podcast.
When requested concerning the closure of PlayStation’s Japan Studio, and fan notion about PlayStation dropping its Japanese affect, Yoshida claimed that it was the market that dictated Sony‘s shift in focus away from Japan Studio IP.
“Throughout my time, folks give me credit score, however one of many issues I used to be not profitable at was having a profitable service recreation, and the opposite factor is I used to be not capable of have amazingly profitable video games made in Japan,” Yoshida defined.
“Aside from Gran Turismo, we had many nice merchandise however didn’t actually have many triple-A-level profitable merchandise. That grew to become increasingly more vital as the massive video games grew to become larger – the indies stuffed the hole and the double-A market appears to have disappeared,” he informed the Sacred Symbols + podcast.
“A lot of the IPs that Japan Studio had had been in that smaller double-A sized group and the market grew to become actually troublesome for these sorts of video games. For instance, after Gravity Rush 2, [director Keiichiro Toyama] tried to give you a brand new idea, however we weren’t capable of greenlight any of his new ideas, although they had been actually fascinating.”
Talking extra about Toyama, Yoshida stated: “In my thoughts, I bear in mind his product appeared like one thing the corporate wouldn’t help, the corporate was on the lookout for triple-A titles, and we actually struggled to get the sport going. So when Japan Studios was shut down and he grew to become unbiased, he was capable of create and launch Slitterhead.”
Yoshida additionally cites the upcoming Patapon non secular sequel Ratatan as the kind of recreation that Sony wouldn’t at the moment make however continues Japan Studio’s legacy.
Sony reorganized Japan Studio into “a brand new organisation” on April 1, 2021, and the overwhelming majority of its improvement employees was let go, as VGC had solely reported a month earlier.
The long-lasting developer behind Ape Escape, Gravity Rush and Knack noticed the overwhelming majority of its improvement employees go away after their annual contracts weren’t renewed forward of the corporate’s subsequent enterprise yr.
