Sony winding down original development at Japan Studio

Turbulent times for Sony Japan

Omg Sony are doomed shutting down going third party etc just waiting for them comments

well those are the comments you would get from the hyper Sony Fanboys if an MS studio did the same

Sony are doomed, shutting down going third party. 😎

If you don't make Japanese games and sell big in Japan I don't see the PS5 or X-Series outselling the PS4 or XB1. Japan helped them out.

@Pedro: 😎 You son of a bitch lol

Lame, but not surprising. They've been on this trajectory for over a gen now.

I get that their big blockbusters come from their western studios, but you'd think the Japan studios were doing well enough. Oh well.

Kinda funny given the assurances from late last year.

I have been saying it for a long time now. Their Japan studios live on a welfare budget. It's not like they had huge support to begin with.

Bummer - it's the less mainstream stuff that has helped keep my interest in Sony all these years. If PS goes all-Western and commits further to this multiplat initiative there's just no way I'll be buying another PS. It's not a "critique" - it just means the brand won't offer something for me any more

I've said it in the Lounge already, but it does seem like Sony has given up on Japan.

Should spend less money on daft Cod deals and keep this studio going

Most of their great games have been in association with other studios. Bloodborne, Demon Souls and the DS remake. Hopefully that will be their focus.

That doesn't sound good at all, at all...

End of an era.

Patapon was perhaps one of my favourite Sony franchises.

For all intents and purposes, Sony Interactive Entertainment is an American company now, from the moment they changed headquarters from Tokyo to California a few years ago. The original Tokyo headquarters is now a subsidiary of the California HQ. So it's Sony America that calls all the shots now.

The only profitable Japanese studio they have atm is Polyphony. The rest aren't delivering the blockbusters that Sony wants.

@Jag85: This is probably whyJapan's gaming markets have been less than impressed with Sony's offerings this time around. Microsoft is at least trying...

@Jag85: They could be gearing up to buy a major Japanese studio that produces hits.

@silentchief: do you really believe that? You think they are winding down this studio in order to buy out other Japanese studios?

@xantufrog: Rumor is they would buy Square/Enix. They do have games that actually sell. Could be all bullshit but Sony Japan would be redundant. Most of their hits have been in association with other companies.

How fast can we forget we were once a Japanese company?

Could be a great opportunity for Microsoft, considering they are rumored to be ramping up in Japan, and actively courting Japanese support. One of Xbox's biggest rumored acquisition targets is SEGA. MS needs to strike Sony while the iron is hot.

The last games they developed by themselves were Gravity Rush 2 and, Knack II.

ASOBI is really the only salvageable team at this point considering Team Gravity/Siren and, Team Ico are gone.

---

It's sad but, Japan Studio hasn't truly been the same since the PS1 days. They really are better off partnering w/ devs to make games like Demon's Souls, and, Bloodborne.

This also makes me question why every high profile Playstation fan is so excited for this supposed "Silent Hill" game. The Pony community on youtube, people like MBG, as well as various "insiders" who are bordering on q-anon levels, keep single-handedly trying to will this PS5 exclusive Silent Hill game into existence.

I dont get it. That franchise hasnt been relevant in almost 20 years (PS2 era), and none of them were massive sellers, so I doubt most modern PS fans hyping this so much have even played the PS1-PS2 games. The PT Kojima game was exciting, mostly because of Kojima and other high profile names that were working on it (like Gueillermo Del Toro, and horror manga artist Jungi Ito) moreso than the Silent Hill franchise itself.

But apparently this "rumored" (I use that word loosely) game that Playstation Japan Studios is working on doesnt involve any of those people either, so it is even further puzzling why Playstation fans are hyping this franchise up so much. At this point, I think Playstation fans will hype anything with the Playstation logo attached to it.

Nintendo kicked Sony out of Japan so they had to move to Merica to chase the casual crowd 🤣🤣🤣

casual crowd is on smart phones and ipads

@ProtossRushX: And Playstation. Look at Sony's first party games, built for casuals the lot of them.

It's an end of an era. Ape Escape was one of my favorite games on the PS1 and Gravity Rush showed potential.

Wow, didn't see that coming.

Well, if it hasn't been profitable I think a good deal of that was their focus on PS Vita development. And it wasn't that they made bad games either, just good games on an unpopular platform. Then when they shifted to PS4 they basically re-released their PSP games one at a time and not in compilations (really, Patapon and LocoRoco should have probably had their entire collections on one master compilation and not trickled out).

This is one thing I never understood about big companies is they can never assess that they have talent that makes quality titles but they might be commercial disasters for other reasons, and instead of shifting their projects to a better platform or avoiding previous marketing mistakes they start to cut funding and scale down those studios. Same thing with Evolution, first two Motorstorm games came out during the slow buildup of PS3 userbase, great games then and still are, and then they shifted to the PSP for next game and instead of being recognized for making good game for a failing platform they treat them as if the sales slump was an indication of inability to make good games. No doubt they saw funding cuts which is why Apocalypse released seemingly not to same quality as previous two. They probably got forced to pivot to Drive Club where they met their end.

Not to pick on Sony though all the major companies do this.

@lamprey263: Bro they helped make a lot of sony's biggest hitters like bloodborne and demon souls remake this is not good at all for sony. I bought a ps4 for bloodborne.

@ProtossRushX: I know they co-developed, not sure how much credit I would give them on that but our sentiments are the same either way, they have talent and should be retained. I for one would love to see Siren rebooted considering Japanese survival horror is a dying genre. Konami is shit. Nintendo made that awful deal with Koei Tecmo regarding Fatal Frame and Nintendo has interfered with publishing it in West. At least we still have Resident Evil. Also, not sure why Last Guardian was held up but would be nice to see Fumito Ueda make another game even if it takes a decade to get it.

Dang, and I had Gravity Rush pretty high on my "Sony Games on PC" odds board. Gonna have to update.

Anyway, in hindsight, it's been coming. Sony's blockbusters that won them the last gen all came from their Western studios, and their Japanese output have just been overshadowed. They've been gradually shifting their focus westward for years. This is the logical evolution of that shift - I just thought sentiment would win out and keep some roots planted in their native Japan, no matter how vestigial.

This is very unfortunate. They were involved in a lot of cool games... Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian, Bloodborne, Astrobot, etc..

At least no loss there, Ueda and other former Team Ico staff formed GenDesign working with Epic as their publisher.

Hopefully see a game this gen lol.

In all seriousness, might not be too bad a wait. TLG was crazy, but ICO and SotC had pretty standard cycles.

Microsoft will save em and make an Xbox Japanaese Premiere studio.