![]() Īcross late 2020 and early 2021, several notable Japan Studio employees announced that they were departing the company. Also during this time, emphasis was place on The Last Guardian, the highly-anticipated third title from Ueda which had been in development for over six years, eventually released in 2016. Though Becker's approach, the studio was able to release shorter but cohesive titles that still reflected a Japanese approach to video games, such as Puppeteer, Rain and Knack. Becker made several tough calls of the 40-some games that were in development at the time of his arrival to terminate development of those unlikely to be successful and implemented similar development processes as Sony's Western studios to get the studio back on track. To get Japan Studio back on track, Sony brought in Becker, who had been working at Santa Monica Studio, to lead Japan Studio. Sony found that there was a lack of triple-A third-party support for these new products, and they had to turn to rely on their internal studios for game support. Around that time, mobile gaming and casual gaming started to become a major factor in the Asian video game market and drove competition from the consoles. Yoshida took over full control of Japan Studio in 2008, at the same time that the PlayStation 3 was out and Sony was preparing to launch the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. Allen Becker, who led Japan Studio starting in 2011, said that their compliancy during the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 era caused the studio to fall behind on updated tools and methodologies for game development. In contrast to Western video game development, Yoshida said Japan Studio's methods tended to allow games to wander. Yoshida attributed this to the general game development practice in Japan which he described as a "grassroots and bottom up", without a clear vision of what a final game would look like, with exceptions being for people like Kazunori Yamauchi or Fumito Ueda who possessed a specific drive towards a product. Though Japan Studio's output during the PlayStation 2 years were strong, it struggled to release successful games during the PlayStation 3 era. According to Yoshida, this led Sony into some compliancy on relying on third-party games to support further consoles, and oversight and support for first-party games was less of a priority. ![]() Alongside these first-party titles, the latter years of the original PlayStation saw strong third-party support, with games like Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid. New games such as Ape Escape and The Legend of Dragoon came out from Yoshida's approach, as well as dedicated teams such as Team Ico for Ico, and Polyphony Digital for Gran Turismo (which eventually was spun out as its own first-party developer for Sony). Yoshida started creating teams within Japan Studio and hired for them. Yoshida oversaw Japan Studio from 1996 through 2000. Examples of these works included PaRappa the Rapper by Masaya Matsuura, and Everybody's Golf by Masashi Muramori. According to Shuhei Yoshida, at the onset, the studio was run similar to Sony's music business, with lead external producers seeking out creative talent and help nurture them to help develop new games. It was formed shortly after the formation of the internal PlayStation division within Sony that included members from the Sony Corporation and the Sony Music Entertainment groups, with Japan Studio developing some of the initial games to be released on the first PlayStation console. Japan Studio is based in Tokyo and was founded on 16 November 1993. In April 2021, Japan Studio was reorganized and merged with Team Asobi and other SIE studios. A first-party studio for Sony Interactive Entertainment (formerly Sony Computer Entertainment), it was best known for the Ape Escape, LocoRoco, Patapon, Gravity Rush and Knack series, the Team Ico games, Bloodborne, The Legend of Dragoon, and Astro's Playroom. ![]() Japan Studio was a Japanese video game developer based in Tokyo.
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