Bloodborne, Tokyo Jungle Executive Producer Masami Yamamoto Leaves Sony

This is really disappointing to be honest. Hopefully all this talent that’s left goes elsewhere and we see more from them. Perhaps something multiplatform!

I'm sure Microsoft have already hired him lol

Thank you for all the great games sir! I hope he goes somewhere where he's appreciated and where he will have freedom to make what he wants. I think he would make a good fit at Fromsoftware 🤔

IMO it is closing to make way for something else.

What’s going on at Sony HQ lately? I understand it’s a business but I hope in their quest to ‘trim the fat’, they don’t loose what made them so unique over the years. Will we also see a shift away from Sony supporting devs making games like The Last Guardian and Dreams? I sure hope not. It feels like they’re loosing their identity in the name of profit.

Seriously Sony, stop sitting on your hands. I have my PS5 but going back to Xbox is looking more and more tempting by the day.

@fR_eeBritney Jim Ryan Is Whats Going On At Playstation HQ.

@fR_eeBritney Sony (Playstation) have become to Americanized. And we as gamers have nothing but our selves to blame for this. We have done nothing but put Sony's bigger American Studios on a pedestal for the last 2 generation while forgetting to properly support their Japanese studio and the smaller studio. Sony is just following where the money is.

'I’ll be able to make games on any platform'.

This is excellent news for both Xbox and PC players, as it means we could all get to experience something like Bloodborne in the future.

The day something good comes out on xbox, I will also get an xbox. So far been waiting three generations for anything to get my attention.

Didn't Japan Studio work with Bluepoint on the recent Demon's Souls remake? If you sum that with Astro Bot, there is really no need for restructuring, they are brilliant!

@Rash Cool story, bro.

Sony utterly bleeding Japanese talent.

Oh, well. Ol' Jimbo wanted this.

Sony is downsizing its first party studios. At the same time Microsoft is acquiring more and more studios. Jim Ryan Mattrick.

and another one gone, and another one gone
another one bites the dust, yeah

@Floki Literally. Everyone likes to act like they loved Japan Studio, but the sales numbers speak differently. Even Bloodborne was on the lower end of the sales numbers compared to other exclusives like Uncharted.

The quality also said a different story, they're a far cry from the PS1 and 2 days unfortunately. Most of their output was as a support studio in the last decade. This downsizing/restructuring isn't 'Jim "Gaijin Satan" Ryan hates Japan', they've been on a decline since the PS3 came out and struggled to recover. Astro Bot is their most successful work in ages, hence the focus on Team Asobi.

I like nintendo strategy of making big AAA games like zelda botw and mario odyssey but they still make smaller games like fire emblem and mario golf. I don't like sony "go big or go home strategy", there's still place for japanese smaller games (that's not western indies) like everybody golf, gravity rush, and others 😕

I like sony big games but it's boring if that's all we get from their exclusive (which isn't exclusive anymore since any games can be ported to pc now).

@fR_eeBritney Yeah, sony is like xbox in the middle of xbox 360 generations, they already "won" the generations so all their move is to make profit, $70 games, trimming the fat, and porting their games to pc.

@Floki Nintendo sold big games like mario odyssey and zelda way more than smaller games like fire emblem, but they're still making smaller games. Platinum games bayonetta 2 and astral chains only sells about 1M but nintendo still making games with them, they care about variety and not just big games. I wish sony is like this, make not only big games but smaller games like in the ps3 era too.

Soul sacrifice and freedom wars was fire

Very sad news indeed.

@wiiware While stuff like Mario and Zelda does sell way more compared to their "smaller" games like Fire Emblem. They still make these smaller games cause we still praise the quality of games like bayonetta 2 and astral chains and they do still generally sell well.

A lot Sony's smaller games release are like farts in the wind. They come out and may sell 'OK', but you never hear about them past release week.

EDIT: The only reason games like Astro is doing well is cause they more or less forced us to play it by preinstalling on every PS5. Lets see if it continues to do well with $60-70 price tag.

Tokyo Jungle was one of my favorite games on the PS3 and I disliked I couldn’t purchase it on my PS4. Only through PSnow could I play it.

@Floki What sony did is just like xbox 360 did at it's peak, when they're the "default" 3rd party machine, they stop investing on the unique and the exclusive games, then one mistake later sony swoop in and won the generations. Now xbox start to invest on the unique exclusive again, while nintendo will have 4K (upscaling) pro console, I don't think it's time to put all of sony exclusive basket only on the big story games.

And astro from the beginning isn't a full $70 game, the game definitely wont sell at $70, not when mario odyssey is $60. That's why I think sony raising their games to $70 is a mistake. For 60+ hours new god of war or ghost of tsushima, sure, but a new ip like returnal, yeah I'm not too sure about that. Sony even think they can charge $70 for destruction all star

Sony Japan did not make Bloodborne, they helped with it, but it was mostly From. I bought most of Sony Japans games but most people did not. Their biggest game outside of Gravity Rush 2 was Astro Bot. Nobody bought GR2 so all you idiots who did not, need to shut up. Team Ico was already done before Last Guardian even came out.

Another talented person who is now free from the shackles that bind are now able to exercise their artistic freedoms on whatever and where ever he chooses..good luck..

@Playstation ten years, lessee... No Heroes Allowed, two White Knight Chronicles games, two Knacks (no matter how fashionable it is in our fan tarpit to crap on them), Patapon 3, Tokyo Jungle, Rain, Soul Sacrifice, Puppeteer, Freedom Wars, Oreshika, The Tomorrow Children, The Last Guardian, Gravity Rush 2... who's delusional here, again? Sure, they have mostly done remasters of their older games lately, but that's a much shorter lately that peculiarly coincides with the same years where Sony gave up on a lot of things under monetary or marketing excuses.

It's not like their earlier classics haven't been called "a mess" in the fandom. @Floki has a point - first we use "niche" and "gimmick" as negative terms, then we make a Pikachu face about corporate business starting to shun them. If there's any "Americanization" here, it's not even about moving HQs or censoring stuff - Sony is just losing grip on the Japanese industry's art of making money on niches and gimmicks. Sure, their whole VR shebang (ironically a gimmick in itself) arguably prevents them from losing it entirely, as do the efforts of folks like Pixelopus and Media Molecule. But wrapping up the Japan Studio era with "restructurings" that have been looking more and more like disbandings is still a step back, not forward.

@Orpheus79V I think @wiiware said it best. No those games were not the best sellers, but they diversified the portfolio offered by SIE, created a lot of fan favorites, generated a lot of noise, received a lot of critical acclaim (even the terribly selling Gravity Rush 2 was a GOTY nominee at TGS). Sales as a metric have two problems. EVERYBODY wants to buy the latest blockbuster, but people will be more divided on the smaller games and some will buy one, some will buy another. Most of JS games got zero marketing push at all in the West, while Uncharted and the like get hundred million dollar ad campaigns. And ultimately games that aren't mass appeal like a popcorn action flick aren't going to sell as well. Sony's solution is chase only the mass market mass appeal stuff. Transformers movies every day of the week! It sells everywhere, offends no one, it's easy money.

The problem is their newfound success has them repositioning playstation to a new bigger market. Away from gamers and our niche interests to the mass media entertainment product consumer. We want our video game system back, but Jim isn't interested in playing both markets. He's chasing exclusively the media entertainment consumer.

@Playstation They didn't "restructure" anything. They closed it down and kept one small team. And the talent behind some of their most notable, iconic, fan-favorite, and critically well received games, albeit not most profitable, games has all left the company.

Yes, they haven't been that profitable, but they also received almost zero marketing support, and were constantly having their hands tied as a content mill for those Naughty Dog blockbusters instead of working on their own products. Layden and House knew what they were doing with Japan Studio. Ryan and Kodera, not so much.

@Floki "We gamers" have been supporting their Japanese studios. It's the games "media" in concert with Sony's marketing efforts, and the mass market of game buyers who aren't "core gamers" who outnumber us 100:1 that showed them that path to profit, unfortunately.

@fR_eeBritney Because they are....

Jim Ryan is being a typical Western corporate suit and media executive chasing maximizing of short-term profits and shareholder value by maximum cost reduction. The modern western executive doesn't build long term value in a company. They cut to the bone of only what immediately generates the most profit for the current quarter, at the cost of the future. Investors demand it, and they get their bonus and golden parachute on the way out after they set a long term struggle in motion that kills worse positioned companies, and severely weakens well positioned ones. But they don't care. They got their cool $800m as the SHTF.

Japanese executives think long term. But for some inexplicable reason Sony handed Playstation to the west, where short term thinking is all that remains. Oddly with the exception of Phil Spencer who's been playing a very Japanese-style long-term game, very unusual for a western exec. Although if Phil were really smart he'd just be sitting at the exits of Japan Studio with a checkbook as everyone walks out. And maybe hit Sony up for the IPs they no longer want. Gravity Rush, Bloodborne, I'm sure sony would take a cool billion or two for that.

@wiiware Not to mention the focus on timed 3rd party exclusives. That's right out of the Don Matrick playbook.

@Floki Also Nintendo markets, markets, markets those smaller games (and creates a dearth of releases to push their sales.) Sony dumps them out on a random Tuesday in Februrary with no fanfare. They signaled they price cut to the bone if you don't buy it right away so people held off buying at all. They created a mess of those games and blamed the developers.

Right now there's a minor, financially, problem with PS though. For gamers that like more variety and niche, we have Nintendo controlling the amount of content and marketing smaller niche games heavily to generate a market for it. We have Microsoft saying with Game Pass every game doesn't need to turn huge profit, contributing to diversity is enough merit to justify funding it. And we now have Sony, the former niche leader saying basically "meh, if it doesn't sell to most of the market, it's not worth it, we only make blockbusters."

so Jin Ryan lied when he stated that Sony care about the japanese console market?i don't see Sony caring about the japanese console market downsizing it japanese development divisions and putting all it eforts in the western market.

When it comes to Bloodborne the only creator that matters is Miyazaki. These guys where just Sony handlers working closely with FromSoft. That said the closure of Japan Studio sucks and I blame Knack for its demise.

@NEStalgia "We gamer" are just as much to blame cause we still don't support Japan Studio as much as we say we do.

And while we are outnumbered 100:1. We are the people family members and friends come to when they ask what games to buy or try. We are still the one these companies listen to cause we yell the loudest. If they didn't, Microsoft wouldn't be on a Studio buying spree. The mass market didn't care that they only released Halo, Forza, and Gears.

@Floki I bought 3 copies of Knack 1, 2 copies of Echochrome, Knack 2, Gravity Rush, GR Remastered, GR2, SotC, TLG, WKC, Soul Sacrifice, and other titles I can't think of right now. In fact it was probably the only Sony studio I bought so much from. Maybe Insomniac and Sucker Punch come in second as a tie. My conscience is clear

I don't get the impression "we" (and by We I mean interchangeably the long-term PS fanbase - more dedicated gaming enthusiast - and the Push Square readership in general) have done so bad by Japan Studio purchases. I've been encouraged to see the popularity of their titles, especially Gravity rush when it pops up in polls here. There's certainly a vocal readership here who's into the "new SIE is best SIE, bring on the moviegames!" mantra, but I get the impression that the PS readership is pretty well balanced and a large contingent of our ranks here are big fans of the Japanese games. But....we're a tiny hole on the internet, and can't compete in dollar value to their newfound moviegoing market.

The final nail for Japan Studio wasn't "us" so much, as they were still depending on Japan to carry their sales and marketing, doing very little to grow the brands here, and when Vita died, so did Japan caring about Playstation, by and large. And Sony didn't want to invest in expanding that market into the west. The easy money was with the big blockbuster studios.

I agree that traditionally we're the group that these companies listen to for good reason. However, when these companies get too successful, they tend to hire managers that are focused on balance sheets and investor growth. Those managers look at the numbers and decide they don't need us anymore. "The ones that brought you here won't get you there" as the business new-speak goes. On paper, they don't. If you know the industry you'd know what you just said - why they need us. But the business-minded guys...they don't know the industry. They know consumer trends. And the trend says we don't matter. Matrick did it half-way through 360. Iwata did it half-way through Wii (though he realized after that he made a big mistake and admitted as much), Yamauchi did it after SNES, Kutaragi did it after PS2, and Ryan's doing it now. They all pay for it in time, but Ryan's damage won't be visible for a few years yet.

Sure, sales numbers weren't great, but so many of those games were half-heartedly thrown out the door as they drove by. The last Japan Studio game that got a proper marketing push outside Japan was Soul Sacrifice on the ill-fated Vita, unless including TLG that was only prominent because it was supposed to be a PS3 launch title.

@fR_eeBritney I think they are going too trim the fat. We all complain but all these games sold terrible.

@NEStalgia As much as i like these games none of them sold decent. You can call Ryan shortsighted but in the end none of the games sold one bit. The development was a disaster of most of my favorite games was a disaster the Last Guardian anyone im sure they didnt make their money back on that, Gravity Rush 1 and 2 the same and for SotC and ICO i never heard them boast about big sales even if they where critically acclaimed games.

@Flaming_Kaiser Yes they didn't sell well. But as I said, that comes down to poor marketing and placement in the west, not building it's market properly (look at Ryan's own statement about not needing games that only sell in Japan... Those games didn't need to sell only in Japan but that's how Sony placed them.)

Ultimately the whole advantage of a platform holder having exclusives is diversity in content. That studio brought tremendous diversity and while the games didn't individually sell well, they collectively add value to the platform. Sony isn't EA. They aren't supposed to live and die ad a publisher of blockbusters. If that's their goal they should just go full third party. Put games on xbox and stadia. Sell to the max. Being a platform holder is different. It's about creating diverse appeal, not maximizing individual title sales. That's the hubris of being a monopoly that let them think that way.

As the diversity shrinks to one or two overarching genres, and competitors are diversifying, while their remaining titles cost more and more to make, that's not healthy for the long term. That was the point Shaun Layden was making 5+ years ago. Ryan didn't listen as he's chasing that short term profit goal and missing the long game.

@Juanalf Didnt he have all the freedom already but no games made big sales?