Forum - View topicNEWS: SIE Japan 'Reorganizes' Japan Studio, Bloodborne Producer Masaaki Yamagiwa Leaves Company
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Mirvana
Posts: 55 |
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Well F***, there's probably goes what-if-any little chance remained of getting another Gravity Rush entry. :'(
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Gomiyaro
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good for him, time for japanese developers to cut ties with soyny. there's no longer any future with those woke idiots. nintendo for the win?
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MarshalBanana
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So they are closing most of the studio down except for one division. This must be to do with there transition into a 3rd party developer. Japan Studio may have made so good games, but they were niche and didn't sell that well, which is fine for a console manufacturer where you just need to entice people to buy your system. Once they've finished with the PS5 and are selling on PC and other systems they will want to only sell sure hitters like other 3rd party developers do.
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gt123
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It isn't too surprising to see Japan Studios get downsized considering the recent lack of sizable hits. Alone it wouldn't be a big deal, but it is a concrete indication of the general trend of Sony Interactive Entertainment reducing their emphasis with Asian markets in general at a time when Nintendo is making unbelievably large inroads market share wise, which you are seeing the fallout for in terms of more PS4 exclusives becoming PS4+Switch titles or in some cases purely Switch titles.
Sony does seems to be working on expanding their Japanese game presence outside of SIE with Sony Music, considering their extremely successful mobile titles (F/GO) and Aniplex expanding into the console market, noticeably with their involvement of the upcoming multiplatform Kimetsu no Yaiba title. |
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-SP-
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What are you even talking about? If you look at the last game sales for Japan you will see that the Switch still utterly dominates. So it makes total sense why Sony would want to restructure the studio that wants to make games targeting only a Japanese audience, as that's clearly not working for them. |
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BadNewsBlues
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Not to mention the fact that as much as people like him like to the moan about Sony turning heel on Japan by capitulating to the west by being mean towards fanservice minded studios, their games, and their audience. The inescapable fact is that Sony's western studios and their games have been more or less successful than this specific studio has been hence this restructuring which could've much worse. Plus where was this same energy from him when Takaya Imamura left Nintendo last month? |
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HomuraNagato
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I am deeply saddened by this news. Gravity Rush is one of my favorite games on both Vita and PS4. With their actions towards Vita, button swap on PS5 dualsense, censorship, and now this, Sony has lost my trust. The Sony I loved in the PS3 era is dead. Long live Corporate-Sony.
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jdnation
Posts: 2121 |
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R.I.P. Gravity Rush, RAIN, Pupeteer, and other ICO-like and niche little games that appealed to that small indy-like audience.
Sigh... I was hoping that Sony Japan would at least pivot to having SCEJ being support studios for outsourced exclusives like Bloodborne, and what we hoped was going to be a Silent Hill project. Now we know why folks like Ueada, Toyama and others were slowly leaving. The writing was on the wall. A positive way to try and look at this is that maybe, just maybe, Sony intends to contract 3rd parties to work on their IP. Hell, I feel like giving the Gravity Rush franchise to Platinum Games could result in improving upon the formula, or continuing to work with FROM on Bloodborne. Doesn't sound like they're going to continue working with Kojima on exclusives either, and will probably just look for 3rd party limited deals like FFVII Remake, FFXVI and Athena. They've got to do something to fill in the Japanese development gap, and we know that Microsoft is looking to buy up Japanese devs to push GamePass in Asia. So unless Sony has plans to purchase Square Enix, Capcom or SEGA and have them run their franchises as PS Exclusives in place of their 1st party Dev which unfortunately couldn't produce hits on par with their Western devs then I don't know what their strategy is. The Japanese market has been declining yes, but the Asian market as a whole is not, especially with China getting in on the action. My guess is that some kind of buy-out is coming, and they're eyeing Square Enix as an entity to operate like Polyphony Digital... |
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enurtsol
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Ever since Playstation HQ shifted to California, it became more Western-minded. As the Bloomberg News already pointed out:
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jdnation
Posts: 2121 |
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They do want a more global approach. Then there's the fact that Japan's aging and childless population is catching up with reality and obviously youth are the primary console purchasers in Japan versus North America and Europe where not only children but a sizable amount of adults use traditional game consoles.
Sadly, much as I hate it, SCEJ's games didn't catch on, and I do believe a big part of it was also the Western branches not pushing and marketing titles, for one thing obviously because they didn't believe in them, which was also a circular eating-your-own-tail strategy. Some people don't like the fact that Hideo Kojima used celebrities in his games, but I can see it not only borne out of the fact that he loves em, but also as a need to appeal to the western in some way. I'm guessing we'll also be seeing more and more smaller developers shifting towards Nintendo Switch if Sony doesn't care to support Japanese devs outside of the big hitters from Sega, Square and Capcom. But what really sucks is the way they're just shuttering everything and letting their staff's contracts expire. I wouldn't even say this was a recent occurrence. This was a problem since the PS3, and things looked to be turning around towards the end of that gen, but what probably really did the Japanese branch in was the general failure of the Vita. |
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MarshalBanana
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Gilarack
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I'll try to see this positive: At least I don't have to buy a PS5 now. Always nice to see some Gravity Rush love by the way. |
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Greed1914
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Between Sony's more global outlook for PS5 and the fact that SIEJ's games, even the well-received ones, didn't sell anywhere near what the Western developed games have, I'm not surprised. I'm definitely disappointed since I don't see this trend as a good thing. It's especially disappointing considering I liked the Gravity Rush games a lot. They were fun and I got the impression that the people making them went into it trying to make the most out of the limited budget they had.
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6320 |
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The Sony that dropped a nearly $700 dollar console that was difficult to develop games for and actually lost them some of their audience and even some developers? And then followed that up with with the Vita which had almost nothing going for it at launch, in addition to being somewhat pricey. |
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