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Former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida has explained that the company shut down Japan Studio in 2021 because its games didn’t “drive console sales.” He goes on to say that if you love the company’s “creative games,” then support the former developers by playing Slitterhead and Ratatan.
During his keynote speech at the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference, that’s been translated by GamesRadar+, Yoshida says that he is frequently asked about PlayStation’s closure of Japan Studio. “Players from around the world have said that it’s unbelievable that Sony would shut down Japan Studio,” he says. “Japan Studio released loads of games, creative games, didn’t it? At that time I was saying something similar.”
Japan Studio is responsible for some of the best and most innovative games in PlayStation’s history. Ape Escape, Shadow of the Colossus, Siren, LocoRoco, Patapon, Gravity Rush, Astro Bot, and many more games come from the talented teams at Japan Studio. Essentially, if you fondly remember a PlayStation game with an ingenious hook, it was probably made there.
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“At that time, as the head of development, I was worried about [Keiichiro] Toyama [creator of Silent Hill] and the other Japanese developers at Japan Studio,” Yoshida says. “But while they came up with a lot of creative ideas, the games they made weren’t big in scale. What we call AA games are a perfect fit for the PlayStation Vita, but we were slowly shifting to AAA on the PS4 and PS5, and sometimes it’s difficult to scale up like that.”
Despite the creativity of Japan Studios Vita and VR games, sales were poor compared to other PlayStation behemoths. Sony then decided to put its bets on AAA games. “As a company, PlayStation wanted to drive hardware sales with games like God of War and Uncharted, because that’s the kind of game that’s in demand,” he says. “It’s hard for Japan Studio to launch a new series on console.”
He finishes by urging people who loved Japan Studio to continue supporting the developers who worked there. “Toyama also had a number of ideas which weren’t able to be greenlit before Japan Studio shut down,” he explains before encouraging PlayStation players to try his new game Slitterhead, and Patapon creator Hiroyuki Kotani’s latest game Ratatan.