Japan studio was announced to be closing earlier this year, effectively shutting its doors by April. This has been part of a larger effort by Sony that began with them moving the PlayStation Headquarters to California several years back. With the increased push into triple-A development, the many studios that made up Japan Studios found themselves unable to survive the changes being made.
During the period between their closure being announced and them actually closing there were large numbers of layoffs and closures. Team Asobi, developers of Astro’s Playroom, was one of the few studios spun out from under the label into its only studio following the merge.
Being a studio founded in 1993, the studio has been involved with many games that helped define the PlayStation experience. Because of this, it is only natural that many gamers might have still held out hope that Japan Studio might come back in some form. This does not seem to be the case.
The PlayStation website has a specific page for first-party studios. As of last month, this list included Japan Studio among the other developers. Now, the studio has been removed, with Team Asobi now being represented where it once was.
Of course, we knew that the company was closed in April so it is not shocking that the company has been dropped. With the influx of new studios being bought, most likely this decision was finally made to help clear space for any of them.
The worst part about this for me is it looks clear we will not be getting a Gravity Rush 3 or new Everybody’s golf anytime soon. The last game that the studio worked on was Demon’s Soul, which was developed by Bluepoint Games.
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