Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden has admitted the closure of Sony’s Japan Studio “wasn’t necessarily a surprise”.
Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden has admitted the closure of Sony’s Japan Studio 'wasn’t necessarily a surprise'
As the Japanese games market continued to be volatile, the industry juggernaut effectively disbanded the developer in 2021 and moved the remnants of the company into ‘Astro Bot’ creator Team Asobi - which later that year was absorbed into PlayStation Studios.
While the ex-PlayStation chief, 63, left the company 2019 and had no involvement in the mass exodus from Japan Studio, Layden has admitted the developer effectively getting shuttered completely was predictable considering the studio hadn’t seen much success in more recent years.
Speaking with IGN Japan, he said: “That was sad [but] it wasn't necessarily a surprise.
“I love Allan [Becker, former head of Japan Studio], and he worked really hard, but there was so much legacy malaise. It's tough when a studio hasn't had a hit for a while, then they forget how that feels.
“You know, if you have a hit once it's it's like a drug, man, you're chasing the next one, right? And then if you don't have that for a while, you forget what it felt like, and then you start to forget how to get there.”
While Japan Studio saw some success with the 2018 VR game ‘Astro Bot Rescue Mission’, the company was mostly relegated to support work on ‘Knack II’ before it was ultimately culled three years later, with Sony reasoning the unstable Japanese gaming market meant it had to pull back from the country.
However, Layden insisted this issue wasn’t unique to Sony, and pointed to other Japanese studios like Bandai Namco and Square Enix which shared the problem.
He explained: “Sadly, I think you can see that problem across the Japanese market. Writ large, there's a lot of legacy, historically super talented teams that haven't tasted success for a while and are still struggling to get back to it.
“But, you know, Capcom is prosecuting that problem fairly directly. I think Sega finds itself in a pretty good place. Bandai Namco has got some refactoring to do. Koei Tecmo has its market, owns that market, and they seem happy with that … How many different versions of [‘Final Fantasy VII’] have been made?! Square Enix.
“I think when they abandoned their overseas developer/publisher ambitions and brought it back to home truths, that was a good move for them, but it'll still take a while for them to get out of the woods.”