Sony Officially Confirms Re-Organisation of Japan Studio

Looking forward to the gritty third person shooter/platformer starring Astro Bot as a wisecracking and teenage version of itself. Think Jak 2 meets Bomberman Act Zero.

gravity rush was not a good game

Super Astro Odyssey BABYYY

I do look forward to more Astro adventures so that's really the only plus side to this story in my eyes.

Gravity Rush was one of Sony's few really appealing first-party properties for me. It was beautiful, charming, unique, and didn't fit into the Playstation Exclusive Template that seems to define so much of their output. It got me to buy a Vita, and the sequel was a big part of my decision to get a PS4.

This sucks.

@nessisonett The Game Would Be Rated R For Robot.

@munstre couldn’t have said it any better. I loved both gravity rush games so much so I got the plat for both the vita and ps4 version of the first and got the second ones plat but nobody bought their games and now people want to cry and get mad at Sony like it’s their fault. I guess these “passionate” fans should have bought the games than maybe this wouldn’t have happened

@munstre why would I care? last great game from Japan Studio was Bloodborne (co-developed with FS). Afterwards, all games are mediocre . An exception goes to, Astro Playroom which isn't a full game. I honestly don’t blame Jim for this. Astro is a beautiful demo. I think they will pull off a great platformer in the future.

@nessisonett was thinking about Astro Act Zero myself 😂

But seriously: this sucks. I was still holding hope for a third Gravity Rush.

@dark_knightmare2 You do realize that us fans on this website are the people that bought their games. I get sick of people strolling in saying crap like you did like true fans that browse these communities are at fault. No, it's the CoD and Fortnite Brodudes that caused this which typically couldn't give two poops about gaming communities...

The Jim Ryan admin is 100% poison.

@get2sammyb Now THAT is something I'd buy the collector's edition of. I need an Astro statue.

To me, this is a double-edged sword. It absolutely sucks that Sony is basically scrubbing away the more niche style of games I grew up with. No matter what their sales data was, it sucks that we won't get any more things like Gravity Rush or Puppeteer from them.

On the other hand, if that means they're committing serious resources to more Astro Bot stuff like a theoretical Astro's Playroom sequel, I can't help but be excited by that.

@TowaHerschel7 Gatekeeping helps nobody. People who play Fortnite and FIFA are just as much gamers as those who play Boob Jiggle Simulator or exclusively niche indie games. It’s a medium at the end of the day, same as any other. Picasso wasn’t ‘real’ art back in the day. While I’m not saying FIFA is a masterpiece, it has its place in the industry.

A bigger Astro Bot game is music to my ears.

The rest of the news not so much. Hopefully those devs can find new homes in studios where they can make what they want and not be constrained by a global gaming monoculture.

The disrespect for Gravity Rush and the destruction of a great studio that brought classic games to PS it’s really sad maybe it’s time for new leadership in Sony

We'll see what happens next.

I love Gravity Rush but their content over the past few years has been kinda bad. Hopefully a restructure and investment will help them grow back up to making great games!

@dark_knightmare2
Well, I did buy games from Japan Studio and I'm disgusted with this move. From the business aspect I may understand it, but Sony never put full marketing weight behind games like Gravity Rush either. Most of the blame I'll put on the fanbase and their unwillingness to branch out even a little bit but Sony isn't totally innocent in this whole mess.

@Gamer83 Sony advertised the hell out of gravity rush 2. They had it at every one of the big gaming conventions like E3,they let gaming sites have hands on time with it and they released a freaking demo which is rare nowadays for most games especially a strictly single player one so what more could they have done? The fact is Sony Japan games have been selling pretty bad since the ps3 gen and it’s easy for fans and armchair CEO’s to blame Sony for this but the fact is if any one of us were running a multi billion dollar company we would do the same thing whether you want to admit it or not. You can’t keep a floundering division around just because fans want you to.

@TowaHerschel7 ok and us fans aren’t enough it sucks but so be it. I’m not going to berate Sony for making a business decision that any one of us in the same position would have made. I mean if you did a crappy job at your place of work would you not be fired? It sucks but that’s business and as much as I loved Sony Japans output it’s on them for not getting casuals interested in their games which lead to them underperforming and lead to Sony closing them down.

Not every game they made doesn't sell millions is failure

Jim Lying cares all about the greed and money.

WOW playstation become soulless 💔

To me Japan Studio seemed to design games around gimmicks foregoing traditional game design, effectively coming across as extended tech demos.

Just look at some of the titles they made: Ape Escape, Fantavision, The Eye of Judgement, LocoRoco, Puppeteer, Gravity Rush, Knack.

All of them feature unusual controls or game mechanics, which is why I think they failed to appeal to a lot of people who just want normal playing games.

What they should have done was to directly compete with Nintendo's output by making games towards a younger audience that also retains gameplay appeal to adults. This still remains a gap in Sony's studios and Japan Studio was the ideal candidate to fill it.

They finally got a real winner with Astro Bot, but it took them way too long to get there. I'm glad that team's the focus now though and they become the prime 3D platformer developer for Sony.

@Ralizah feel the Same. Gravity Rush was a breath of fresh air surrounded by a bunch of super serious 3rd person emotional action/advanture shooters. I like those games once in a while too but to just make that one type of game is well boring.

Amazing news, Astros player room is one of the best Platformers I've played in the last five or more years. I would happily pay $70 for a huge full-sized Astro game

They say japan studio wasn't bringing in enough bread. People slept on their games but were wide awake for God of War, and spiderman, and uncharted and sushi ghost. And I'm not crapping on these games. Yes they are good games but let's be real. They do pretty much nothing that we haven't seen already and just have more pixels, or more particles during an explosion and more wrinkles on a characters face or something. And when something unique and creative is made, it gets crapped on for being too hard or having controls that no one even bothered trying to figure out or that the game didn't hold their hand and tell em what to do every 5 minutes. Well this is the result.

Wtf happens at sony, they're at the top but now they're doing everything to dismantle that, scaling back their most diverse (games wise) studios, adding additional $10 to their 1st party games, not making ps5 exclusive games for their well known ip (horizon fw, spider-man mm have ps4 version), and porting their exclusive to pc? It's like they're doing everything wrong just because they're in the top.

@Amppari Your word is as empty as your soul. Mankind ill needs a savior such as you 😛

@Ralizah Agreed. I'm also hoping that we can at least get a PS5 patch for the game or even a PC port for the game(s) to prolong the franchise's life, but I guess that's all wishful thinking now.

For me this is a real negative in buying a PS5 in the future, and I may just stick with my Switch. My gaming preference is for Japanese gaming with a focus on colourful, weird games with unique mechanic and tight controls that take themselves less seriously than their western counterparts. It’s the reason I have no interest in an XBox at all. If the PS5 is going to have 6-8 less Japanese games this gen, I question if there is enough exclusive games from Square and Capcom I like to warrant the purchase of a PS5?

@munstre
Fair enough comment. A bit similar to the Vita. If it doesnt sell, it doesnt sell. What can you do?
That doesnt mean Sony inst interested in Japan anymore like some people jumping the gun. Same happened in the UK.
Hopefully they open new studios instead like the one they opened in Malaysia.

Shame their focus is just going to be on Astro. I can understand why the top guys quit. Might be a good game (have not played it) but that would suck if your creative freedom was taken like that. Hope their new studio rocks.

I've fond memories of many games over the years that showed the Japan Studio name. Dark Chronicle, Everybody's Golf and White Knight Chronicles to name a few.

I'm not gonna lie - I somehow missed Gravity Rush altogether (didn't even know what it was until recently), bought both Knacks on sales, playing The Last Guardian now via PS Plus and I think the remake of Shadow of The Colossus (Bluepoint but I guess it still counts) was on PS Plus too. I don't have PSVR so I never played Rescue Mission. Guess the only Studio Japan game I played at launch was Astro's Playroom but you know how that worked (I would've bought it though). I'm definitely getting the next Astro game.

Shame. Their games are definitely not for everyone, but they provided much needed diversity to Sony's portfolio. Hopefully they can start expanding again, after the re-organisation.

What does this mean for the games that did sell well universally, such as Everybody's Golf?

@dark_knightmare2 actually you can. A few years ago, when they were still doing well, they said that 6/10 (I think?) of their games make a profit, while the rest don't, but that's ok, because those that do more than make up for it.

Even if someone doesn't buy Gravity Rush, the game can still help by diversifying the library. Someone could buy a ps4/ps5 for it and then tens of other games and could even influence his friends to buy the same console so that they can all play Fifa, for example, together.

I would understand if they were struggling like the ps3 days and had to sell buildings or cut costs down. But after making record profits, it comes off greedy.

@wiiware This is what happens when you have no real competition. The only time Sony does any thing right. Is when they was getting trashed on by Xbox. Now that both Xbox and Nintendo are no real competition with the PS5 still out selling the SeriesX. They have no need to try, and can scale back effort. We saw the same thing when Microsoft was going from the Xbox 360 to the Xbox One.

It's business

@Artois ignorance intensifies.

Why does clicking on the previous article on this subject bring us to this article instead? We can't respond to comments from the first article.

Gravity Rush 1 and 2 are the games I enjoyed most on PS4 along with The Last Guardian. I would take those games over a Uncharted or The Last of Us any day of the week. It seems we won't be getting many Japanese developed exclusives on the PS5.

@Floki I hope nintendo make 4K machine that have 3rd party western games, like next gta, cod and (non legacy) sport games, I think that will make a really good competition for sony lol.

Man it suck that every console makers have their own niche now, we need snes vs megadrive, ps vs nintendo, ps vs xbox era again.

Good news for Astro Bot fans like a muhself

@naruball yeah Sony is in way better place nowadays but they are still a business and they decided to shed a division that was losing more money than they were making. If they kept a division like that around to appease fans or just to diversify their portfolio it could lead to them going back to a bad place and no one wants that.

@3MonthBeef I don't think that applies to Switch, which can be played using a normal controller on a TV without any forced motion controls or touch mechanics.

What I mean by directly compete with Nintendo is that they should have focused on luring Nintendo fans by making games that would appeal to the same audience. They delivered a perfect response to Mario with Astro Bot but it remained locked to PSVR so the vast majority never got to experience it.

@naruball why? Because I can understand that maybes it's a business decision? They see the numbers daily, so they can make a better judgement than we can on whether it's worth their time, effort and cash to keep pumping out these obscure titles just to please their fans. When clearly there isn't enough of or they would have made a larger net profit. Hence it's business

I want them to keep the Japan Studios name really It always excites me when I see that + Jim Ryan has been saying a lot of things that seem to not be happening :-/ Jim and Phil Spencer must be Twins then

@munstre Thank you for saying it!!! I've been dealing with this in Twitter. People who either bought the games used, or at a bargain bin price or not at all are coming out the woodwork to complain and its infuriating.

Still hopes for Gravity Rush 3 amid more of Astro.

Puppeteer and Gravity Rush are all time fav for me.

But I also loved Astro's Playroom. Never had PSVR so did not now what all the fuss was about. But it is a brilliant game/character.

If they now develop the little guy into a fleshed out IP - happy with the news.

@TowaHerschel7 it is true that most of use here are the fans who bought the games. I bought GR on Vita, I preordered GR REMASTERED on PS Store and Preordered GR2 on PS Store. I did the same for TLG. But so many others did not. I know some feels that digital preorders are the Devil but they sure do send a message.

@ronb44..... You hit th nail right in the head....... and gamers don't want to admit this....

For example God of War is way overrated cause it simply a Corridor simulator with some fighting, the feeling you get while playing it is the feeling of being in a Museum just looking at good views or pictures.........

And the real reason the game is currently so well received and it now being a AAA game as opposed to being an A or AA as it was during the Ps2 and ps3 Era is the twist they put at the end of the game with Kratos's son character twist revealed at the end of the game......

Sony, you soulless cretins! Japan Studio is wonderful and PlayStation feels hollow without them.

Another win for Jim "Matrick" Ryan!

Gravity Rush, and most of Japan Studio's IPs, was one of the most compelling Sony IPs to me. The overall, tone, feel, structure, and everything else about the game was "Very Playstation". At least old PlayStation. To me that game epitomized a "feel" that represented everything the PS brand stood for. It was unique, and helped characterize Playstation as unique, along with similarly "non-categorizable" titles like SotC. There's truly nothing else like it, anywhere, and you could get it "Only on PlayStation." It's still a joy to experience, and based on the poll you guys had a few weeks ago about what games people here want to see a boost mode patch for, GR2 landed at, what, second place behind TLoU2? I think there's a lot of us here in the "enthusiast" category that appreciated such a unique games from Sony.

Obviously we may be in the minority of the Global Market that PS can reach. Not liking Michael Bay films is also to be in the minority of the Global Market. I'll still choose taste over mass appeal.

Confirmation of a new Astrobot (more or less) is certainly exciting. Astrobot is included in some of the really great PS experiences, absolutely. In fact it's the only truly great PS5 experience so far to date (Nobody say "Demon's Souls", you're digging your own grave, that's also Japan Studio in concert with From! (and there's zero reason it couldn't be on PS4.). But the entire legacy of Japan Studio devolving down to "they make Astrobot. That's it." And the fact that Sony now really has no "creative/niche/exotic" content studio beyond MM that really makes one sort of creative game, and is re-focusing everything on really producing the same types of games over and over is depressing.

I buy Playstation because they provide unique game experiences I can't get anywhere else. Or they used to. Now? Gow, HzD, Uncharted, etc... These are fun games. They're nice experiences. They're high quality polished mass entertainment products. Would I pay full price for any of them? No. I don't get much hype for those games. I can play them 6 months, a year later. It's fine. And cheaper. Astrobot? Yeah, I'll preorder that. A new gravity rush? I'd preoreder the LE. A new GoW, HzD, Killzone, Uncharted, etc? Eh, I'll get to it by the end of the gen. It's a quality game. Would I buy hardware to play them? Honestly, no. They're not really special. They don't do anything that Ubisoft, 2K, WB, EA, Activision, THQ don't do, they just have shinier paint.

The new vision of Playstation feels like the old vision of Xbox. The 360 era when Xb was nothing but the same brown shooter over and over, and PS3 offered new and exiting ideas. Now we've flipped the tables. PS5 is the host of endless 3rd person over the shoulder cinematic action games delivered in miniseries style trilogies and quadrilogies, while Xbox has weird, mixed-budget creative one-off games like Ori, experiments like The Medium, streamlined classic WRPGs like Outer Worlds (yes it's multiplat) etc. These are games I would have expected from Sony 10 years ago, and ignored Xbox for not having. Now?

@truerbluer What was unconventional about the controls of Knack or Gravity Rush? The other games I can agree with. But Knack played like any other brawler platformer, but with upgrade paths. It was arguably Skylanders-esque at worst. Of course that was a Cerny design, not Japan Studio at the onset.

Gravity Rush is what is today unconventional maybe. It plays a lot like arcade space sims that were may be more popular 20 years ago (Ace Combat, Hawx, Freespace, Independence War, etc. etc.) But mixed with a ground aspect. It's truly unlike anything else. By definition it could be niche as people aren't used to flight games in general. But it was hardly unconventional within it's blend of genres. The world itself is what was unconventional.

@nessisonett True, but with the structure of the gaming industry, it's like saying French Laundry is going to be closed, because they just can't pull in the revenue that McDonald's does, so it's going to be restructured to sell buckets of An Jous, and the funds will be used to prop up a new fast pizza chain to launch along side McDonalds.

Sure it's good business. And gateekeping against Big Mac fans to preserve the delicate Coque au vain is wrong. But it still kinda sucks if you don't like potatoes refried in motor oil and would at least prefer beef that isn't pressed floor scraps, even if it's not prime rib.

It's two different markets. You don't have to be the biggest, most profitable market to still be a viable market. That's what leaders like Ryan ignore. They want the most expedient line through the investor reports.

@RBMango The problem is that with Jim "Matrick" Ryan's thinking Japan Studio sounds like it'll become like Santa Monica. Or, y'know, Raven and Treyarch.....ahem. 25 years of producing the semi-annual Astrobot and not a single other franchise.

@dark_knightmare2 @munstre They really undermarketed it outside Japan. I mean it was invisible. I came into it watching all the sony shows and events, as an existing huge gravity rush fan. I was THE target market they were aiming to reach were they aiming to reach one. And they still somehow missed me completely and I was barely aware it was there (yes, I did preorder once I figured it out....two copies...) But they really really missed the mark on marketing. They really didn't help.

Sony used to offer a real alternative to a more sophisticated, adult oriented take on the types of content Nintendo produces. Now they offer an alternative to EA and call it a day. The argument of "Japanese games are no longer as relevant in the world" is silly. Nintendo focuses on that content and is eating Sony's lunch with objectively inferior products at worse value with a console poised to possibly outsell mighty PS2 for a new all-time champion. I'd say demand for that content is stronger than ever. Sony just doesn't remember how to be competitive in that space so they'll just abandon it entirely.

@wiiware I doubt we'll see a 4k machine. So far any console rumor are putting Nintendo next console in the power range of a PS4 with a faster CPU.

@Enigk Exactly. The games they're killing are the games that were the reason I bought Playstations all these years. The games they're promoting instead are the kinds of games that were the reason I originally never cared about Xbox. If this were 7 years from now I'd be saying there's no chance I'd buy a PS6...no reason to get one. As of today, I really can't see myself owning a PS after PS5 unless or until the tables switch again. I feel like Xb is currently more likely to provide the kind of experiences I used to buy PS for. Nintendo's still Nintendo but they've either latched onto just riding trends cheaply, or are holding back their output for the next hardware. And PS5 is looking like a repeat of X360: Mostly games I don't care about, with a few gems thrown in. Though 360 had Blue Dragon.

@3MonthBeef Exceptionally well said! Agreed 100%, both posts.

I suppose the masses love those cinematic experiences, but Sony only switched their focus to that starting with PS4. That's not how it was through PS3, so existing fans are really getting a switcheroo. It's the kids that joined up in the last 8 years that think that's what PS has always been about. Then again, aren't the masses into Fortnite, which is quite the opposite? This new PS audience is the easy majority of the PS audience, but to me it's an alien, not very PS audience at all. Those are the kinds of games I used to associate with Xb. (Now they're the WRPG king and appeal directly to exactly who used to gravitate toward PS, go figure...)

Of course the graphics focus isn't new from consumers or gamers. But who's to say a series like Gravity Rush doesn't push the hardware. GR2 brought base PS4 to its knees.

It's weird though. Everybody loves Sony's cinematic realistic games it seems, but I still find the gameplay lackluster across the board. I like that term "games adjacent" - it's a good description. When Sony made games like Gravity Rush and Heavenly Sword, I'd look forward to first party Sony the most. Honestly when I look at what they're bringing to the table instead... R&C I'm a big fan, Sackboy is special, and there are a few other "I definitely like it" series, but generally speaking if I look at the western gritty games I'm most interested in, and excluding anything from MS's stable (of which a considerable volume interests me, and I find that stunning), I can honestly say I'm far (far) more excited about the next Dragon Age, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, the Hogwarts game (ok not gritty) and IOI's Bond game than I am about anything announced or rumored from Sony. And I'm on the edge of my seat with hope for the Deus Ex 3. And I'm even more interested in Cyberpunk than most of the known Sony games, whenever they get it working. Sony's current studio direction just doesn't appeal to me at all. I'll get "Spiderman 2" because it feels like a watered down inFamous, and I loved inFamous 1 & 2 (3 was ok but clearly rushed), so the pale imitation will have to do. Maybe that will change over 7 years, and I'm excited for PSVR2. Maybe Gravity Rush will become a VR series. I'd be down for that.

I'm going to miss the old Japan studios, sure they didn't make a ton of profit, but they had great titles that were underrated in the international market. Shame that Sony is scaling back when they should be ramping up production and hiring in my opinion. But it's their business, let's hope this doesn't bite them in the bud.

@Floki Well, as long as it's a portables, I'm in 😃. I still have, wait a minute, 6 physical switch (exclusive of course) games and no switch to play it lol, still waiting for the rumored switch pro 😂

Sold my switch v1 for lite, didn't like lite so I sold it, want to buy v2 but the price is super expensive because of switch shortage back then, now the v2 price is back to normal but there's switch pro rumor..

@JapaneseSonic Nope. Never said I was. Never felt that way. Not really sure what part of my comment made you think I consider myself better than others for the types of games I play.

Just saying the truth.

The very best thing to come of this is potentially more Astrobot. Otherwise this is a massive blow to Playstation, Japan Studio easily has produced PS's most unique games and have such an awesome legacy, it's a shame to see them gone. Yes it is "just business", but it really sucks how great developers can't carry on making great games because they didn't rake in enough profit. Sony can obviously do whatever they want, but they have really spat on their legacy.

As much as I like Uncharted, GOW etc, variety is really important, having global development teams helps with that. Unfortunately Sony is closing down half of their non US devs.