Two More Sony Japan Studio Devs Depart at the End of This Month

Jesus, there's never any good news about Japan Studio these days.

This is not good news.

Wow, nobody’s left at this rate!

Theyve worked there for years an opportunity has arisen for a different challenge ,why not leave and give it a go.

Good luck sir you produced a masterpiece. Big losses for Sony Japan.

How long until Japan Studios will close down lol? Not sure if it has any Producers/Directors left to work on Games. But sure Jim Ryan, "Japan is still important to us"

Japan Studios is dying, I expect a closing announcement soon.

What's going on in the Japan studio?

This could mean two things. It’s either they’re bringing in new blood to Japan Studio, or there are disagreements of the direction Sony is handling Japan Studio. I hope it’s the former. But let’s wait and see. Wish them both the best.

@Total_Weirdo They also created Gravity Rush, co-developed Demon's Souls with FromSoftware, and also co-developed all of Team Ico's games (Ico, Shadow of the Colossus & The Last Guardian)

They also did games like Patapon & LocoRoco (which is extremely underrated imo) and also created the Ape Escape series in addition to working on stuff like Soul Sacrifice and Freedom Wars (aka the last worthwhile PSVita exclusive now that Persona 4 Golden is on PC)

"Japan is still important to us...as long as it's not us specifically"

At this rate. Next thing (I highly expect) Sony shuts down Japan Studio. So much for “Japan is important to us”.

Judging by Sony studio Japans list of games they worked on , their role as a gaming division changed quite drastically at the end of the PS3 lifespan when they made incredible experimental games like( Tokyo Jungle , Echochrome,Patapon and LocoRoco )and it seems at the start of the Playstation 4 lifespan they played more of a supportive role Co-creating games with other devs to help push the games meeting their calender release dates .

It may very well be in this reason that key devs like Fumito Ueda, Masaaki Yamagiwa , Ryo Sogabe ,Keiichiro Toyama and others have left Sony cause there is better opportunities to create indepentant studios and making the games they want to make while they are still young.

Best of luck to all these people )

I'm not that familiar with many of Sony japan studio games, but my understanding is that they don't sell too well? And a lot of the people leaving seem to be a lot of producers so perhaps Sony is trimming the fat to make the studio for efficient or something like that.

I'm not picking up anything to suggest unrest or ill feeling..all i am reading is that some big name game producers are moving on to pastures new..maybe they just fancied a change of scenery..it happens and it dosnt always have to be negative..i hope they have a great future and wish them well..

No offense, but I'm not exactly keen to believe anything Jim Ryan says anymore.

Not only are they not aquiring or increasing their Japanese developers but they are losing what very very little they already had (so 1 and a half Japanese teams from the "Japanese " company).

"Jim Ryan reiterated the strong ties the company has with Japanese developers."

Sure thing great Jim, just do what you're only good at and hurry up with the TLOU2, Bloodborne and Rift Apart PC ports (maybe we can get Series X ports later 🤔).

WTF is going on inside Japan Studio? Is it even a studio anymore? Are they closing it "slowly"? 343 (Halo's disaster studio) didn't have this many people exit. CDPR hasn't had this many people exit.

It seems like Jim comes out weekly to assure Japan Japan is still important to them, and then another half dozen high profile people leave Sony's Japan Studio. The top talent behind the majority of major Japan Studio games is gone now. I'm really curious what's actually left.

Then again Jim basically told us that they're done with VR and waiting for someone else to make it profitable a few months before they tell us they're doing a new VR....he has a worse track record than the "unnamed source" often cited on the internet for rumors. Maybe he really just doesn't actually know what's going on at at Playstation. Wouldn't be the first exec.

It's not an internet conspiracy that things are troubled at the studio. We've had a steady stream of departures for months, mostly big, high profile people, some legendary, that have been there forever. Now they're coming multiples on the same day. That's not normal. At this point they should just sell Japan Studio to Konami and be honest.

@Total_Weirdo Bloodborne, Demon's Souls, Gravity Rush 1 & 2, Soul Sacrifice, Astrobot, PaRappa, Ape Escape, Dark Cloud, Loco Rocco, Echochrome, White Knight Chronicles, Everybody's Golf, Last Guardian, Shadow of the Colossus.......

Weren't Japan Studio partly behind Everybody's Golf?

Either way, without a competitive hand-held, I think PlayStation is getting less and less relevant in Japan while the Switch goes from strength to strength.

Well that is a bummer, but he was with the company 14 years, which is quite a long run.

As far as a hypothetical Bloodborne sequel goes, the only person I would care about not being involved in it is Hidetaka Miyazaki.

I don't understand what's the point of talking about this. Amy Henning the creator and director of the Uncharted series left after Uncharted 3 (the worst in my opinion) and Uncharted 4 came to be what U3 couldn't and more, also Japan plays on mobile and sony doesn't have any representation in that category and the people in JS have the right to leave and search for what they believe are better situations.

Those are the two faces of vg development, names don't make great games, talent does. And if you are unhappy with something is better to go and search for what will make you happy.

in other news milk is white! this happens day in day out at all studios around the world.

More bad news. I love Japan Studio and this is looking really bleak. Sony is obviously gutting their Japanese studios. Maybe I’ll hold off getting a PS5 for a few years.

This is what happens when you put anime hating censor police in charge of a Japanese company, they censor violence in anime based games while catering to the loud virtue signaling minority morons on twitter.
The ps5 will definitely lack Japanese developed games compared to previous generations and this will kill off Playstation if Jim Ryan remains in charge, get him out of there and return Sony's HQ back to Japan.

@malbhet "They censor violence in anime based games"

No I don't think so.

Sounds like corporate horse crud to me. I don't get it. Games should be developed in Japan too.

@Total_Weirdo That would be the most world-upside-down ironies if all the developers that have made a Playstation a Playstation for the past 25 years years ended up being part of Xbox! I can see that happening. MS seems to be aiming for bigger studios at the moment, but a lot of these devs are used to big first party budgets and are going to be very squeezed as an indie. That actually would be a good match for everyone. MS needs more Japan, and MS has the business model to finance more niche games without relying on blockbuster sales, and these devs need big-publisher budgets for what they want to make. Not too likely, but never impossible.

Mostly, though, given Switch's success, Nintendo's domination of Japan, and the fact that the Switch market seems to gobble up indies far more than PS/Xb, I can see them calling Nintendo and PC home and doing ok. Their games won't have the polish they used to have, but they'll still have more spark than Jim Ryan's insipid content mill.