Even as someone who’s been playing on PC ever since the end of the seventh generation of consoles, I was quite saddened to hear that Sony’s Japanese game development studio, Japan Studio, was shutting down in early 2021. With this loss, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s long lineup of developers now only include two studios based in Japan, Polyphony Digital who develop the Gran Turismo games and Team Asobi who develop the games featuring Astro Bot. Given Sony’s newfound interest in both releasing games on PC, which I approve of, and creating high-budget story based games, which I’m not as fond of for many reasons, I thought I’d take a look at the history and legacy of Sony’s most creative but now gone video game studio, Japan Studio.
Japan Studio was established in 1993 by Sony in order to develop first-party games for their then upcoming console the PlayStation. One of the unique aspects of this studio initially was that the producers would seek out talent and then encourage and assist them in making a game that fit with their creative vision. This certainly explains some of the more unusual games that they ended up producing initially such as Jumping Flash!, PaRappa the Rapper, Fluid etc. while also producing some more typical games such as Wild Arms and Rapid Reload.
Arguably the most important game that they ended up developing for the PlayStation was the first Ape Escape game. In addition to being a critical and financial success, it was also one of the first games, if not the first, to require the use of the then newly developed DualShock controller which featured analog sticks that were used to not only move the character but to direct where his gadget was pointing.
While they continued to develop their own games with particularly noteworthy examples being Gravity Rush, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, LocoRoco etc., they also worked with other Japanese studios to help develop and produce games. Easily the most important collaboration came from working with FromSoftware on the 2009 PS3 game “Demon’s Souls”. Despite initially being poorly received by Sony itself with Shuhei Yoshida, then president of SIE Worldwide Studios, famously saying that, with reference to Demon’s Souls, “This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game.” After Demon’s Souls and its spiritual successor Dark Souls proved to be critical and commercial hits, Sony clearly realised their mistake and had Japan Studio work with FromSoftware on developing a new PS4 game called Bloodborne while Japan Studio ended up working with Bluepoint Games to produce a remake of Demon’s Souls as a launch title for the PS5!
However, it’s notable that Japan Studio’s output began to slow down around the late PS3 era and, in early 2021, it was announced that Japan Studio was going to be shut down due to a lack of profitability with the sole surviving team being the developers of Astro’s Playroom, a game that was preinstalled on PS5s and garnered critical acclaim, who were reformed as Team Asobi. While a lack of profitability is a somewhat understandable reason to shutdown a studio, it felt to me that Sony had lost interest in Japan Studio and were not giving them the marketing, budgets and care for them to thrive.
Now that Japan Studio is gone with many of its creators scattered and creating their own studios, I fear that Sony’s continued disdain with Japan Studio’s catalogue, along with their fanaticism for graphical fidelity, will prevent many of these games seeing future rereleases. In particular, many of the games that I’d love to see Sony release on PC were either developed by Japan Studio, such as Ape Escape and Wild Arms, or made with their involvement, such as Demon’s Souls, Bloodborne and Shadow of the Colossus (the remake since I think the chance of the original PS2 game being released on PC now is nil). Interestingly though, Gravity Rush, a game series from Japan Studio, is going to be receiving a film adaptation from PlayStation Productions so I could potentially see the Gravity Rush games seeing a rerelease around that time.
Let me know your thoughts on Japan Studio: Sony’s most creative, now gone, video game studio, which games of theirs that you’ve played, whether you’d also like to see these games get rereleases in the future, what you thought of Sony shutting down Japan Studio and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Thanks for reading and if you wish to seek any of the titles I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs! Also feel free to follow my curator page on Steam “JRPG Reviews” for thoughts and opinions on any JRPGs that I play and my YouTube channel “Victory Achieved Gaming” where I guide my friend through challenging games.