Last night, before the State of Play, a very surprising news appeared, which the magazine was the first to report on VGC, but a few hours later it was confirmed by Sony itself. Japan Studio, Sony’s oldest first-party studio, is due to close on April 1 this year. The studio was behind the development of games such as Knack, Gravity Rush or Ape Escape, but in recent years it has focused more on helping other studios, where we can mention, for example, the remake of last year’s Demon’s Souls.
The news is really unexpected, but we have had a few clues in recent months. Last year, for example, Kejchiro Toyama, the author of Silent Hill, who founded his own studio Bokeh, left Japan Studio, and there have been more such cases recently.
Presenting you our new game studio founded by Keiichiro Toyama – Bokeh Game Studio.
Introducing the new game studio-Boca Game Studio established by Keiichiro Toyama.https://t.co/Gtwf0yAumM— Bokeh Game Studio (@BokehGameStudio) December 3, 2020
The positive news is at least that some Japan Studio employees will now join the Asobi Team, which was originally a division of Japan Studio. For example, it has Astro’s Playroom, which is pre-installed on the PlayStation 5 console and mainly shows the functions of the DualSense driver. The rest of the original Japan Studio will then be added to other Sony locations around the world.
According to VGC, the company decided to take this step because Japan Studio did not make enough profits and the developers wanted to create games aimed at the Japanese market, while PlayStation wants more global hits, which are created by other studios belonging to Sony.
An interesting situation now arises with the new Silent Hill, which has been speculated about for a very long time. We recently they learnedthat maybe two projects are being created, one in the Polish studio Bloober Team and the other (this is the one that is mainly talked about) is to be created in a Japanese studio. So far, we have not learned exactly what team the team should work on, but so far Japan Studio has seemed most likely. Just because Sony has marketing rights to the title. However, the end of Japan Studio completely changes the situation and I honestly do not dare to guess where the Silent Hill actually originates. And leaker Dusk Golem probably doesn’t know it either, who first informed about the game about a year ago.
(2/2) (Deleted tweet, was asking me if Sony Japan Studio news changed what I heard) was being processed & translated basically with Sony marketing, but that doesn’t mean they developed it.
If I get word of something else happening there, I’ll let you know.
— AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem (@AestheticGamer1) February 25, 2021
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