I'm not going to undermine the relevance of JS in the history of PlayStation but they had a whole decade without releasing something worth of being called their best studio and they actually picked the worst time to not make something big because we are talking of the early 2010s, the moment in time where Sony was in the border of bankruptcy and then bounced back thanks to the PS4 and games that weren't from JS lol. The Last Guardian was kept alive in their worst economics in their history and when it finally released it was "ok".  

The people behind Astro Bot are still working in Astro Bot and the people who helped with Bloodborne did the exact same job that XDEV Japan is doing right now with ArcSys and has done with KT and KP, back up development and management. 

I love to talk about Housemarque but I don't see why this became a topic lol. If the reason is because it was part of the acquisition streak Sony did for this generations well that streak started with Insomniac and I'm pretty sure they are not going to close anytime soon lol so I say people should let SAROS do all the talk.

Asobi Team was part of Japan Studio, so even the last GOTY Sony had came out from it. Astro Bot is a Japan Studios IP.

Japan Studios struggled to have proper workflow to release games, indeed, but those games they co-developed were Demon's Souls and Bloodborne, some of the very best PS3 and PS4 games ever. Changed from King's Field to something that now in Elden Ring is one of the biggest games out there.

Locoroco they developed and Patapon they co-developed defined the PSP.

Gravity Rush is one most loved games on PS Vita too.

Currently losing a studio like Naughty Dog or Santa Monica would definitely be a bigger issue, sure, but Japan Studio was the very soul of Playstation.

PS1 and also best game ever, The Legend of Dragoon.

PS2 best game, Shadow of the Colossus.

PSP some of the most famous games, Loco Roco.

PS3 co-developed one of the best games, that spawned a sub-genre in gaming that is huge now, Demon's Souls.

PS4 the same, Bloodborne.

PSV had one of the best games too, Gravity Rush.

PS VR best games, Astro Bot Rescue Mission.

PS5 with Team Asobi following it gave us what is still the only PS5 GOTY so far, Astro Bot.

Ape Escape, Siren, Ico, Patapon, and so many more games.

Japan Studio was without a single doubt the best studio Sony ever had. Ever since the PS1 up until the PS5, even after most of the studio was disbanded, it marked pretty much every single system Sony ever had with some if not the best games there.

And that's exactly why I said that I don't want to take anything from their history lol.

The people who were able to do something relevant in its last decade of existence still have a job either at Asobi or XDEV (the japanese division was made with ex Japan Studios employees)

Japan Studio was awesome. The part I hated the most about their closure was that it happened so quietly like it wasn't even worth announcing...

Other studio closures are usually accompanied by acknowledgment of developers talent and contribution, but not in this case. They silently murdered them behind the scenes, and kept their brightest kid (Asobi). Things went south when Fumito Ueda left, and it was all but over when Keiichiro Toyama left. It felt like a smaller version of my dear Konami's fall into irrelevance...

I understand the closure though. As brilliant as they were, their output deteriorated over the years, and they didn't produce enough million sellers, let alone mega popular titles. Their most relevant internally developed games before Astro Bot were Ape Escape and Shadow of the Colossus. The biggest title they were involved with is Bloodborne.

As far as I'm concerned, SotC and Bloodborne are in the "top 10 of all time" tier.

By 2012 or 2013 a guy from Santa Monica, if I recall it right, was tasked to help some studios get back on their feet, and Japan Studio was one of them.

Again, if I recall it right, the guy was worried about what he saw there, lots of bright ideas, but no direction whatsoever, everybody would just do what they wanted how they wanted and things just weren't moving anywhere.

By this time they were releasing stuff like Gravity Rush and Puppeter, both games that found love by players but not commercial success, they still had a lot time to work things out, in all of this The Playroom gave life to the Bots and eventually Astro Bot and they were still able to put out what people say is the best PS VR game in Astro Bot Rescue Mission, but I think Sony gave up on them by the time Gravity Rush 2 failed. Astro Bot Rescue Mission still garnered huge critical reception after that but by that point Sony might only have changed their minds about them as they lived on (gladly).

I'll be honest tho, Sony has funded so much shit with insane amounts of cash after closing Japan Studio, bought and opened studios to just close them down, and with a tiny fraction of that Japan Studio could still be living to this day...

Yesterday there was these news about how a team pitched a Jak remaster, I was interested to know when that happen because apparently news sites only care about the click bate and don't care about the details so I asked directly to the guy who posted and made the video and he told me it happened in the second half of 2019.

As unlikely as it may seem for that to happen now, in 2019 that was NEVER going to happen. 2019 was the start of the Ryan era and Ryan was the first step of Sony's service push and also the focus in AAA giant experiences but a lot of things have changed since then, the service push is a proven mistake and smaller games have been successful to the point the GOW game was an indie developer pitch and not a Sony idea.

So of course I told the guy that if they are still interested they should try again after Sony shows Fairgames and has some time to see the likely reaction LOL. In a couple years when Fairgames and 4:loop are out that will be a hell of a pitch.

Yeah. The issue with Japan Studio is that their working style favoured the type of game budgets we saw for PS1/ PS2/ PSP and Vita. As long as someone has a working idea, they could just get a team together and start working.

But the issue is that game budgets increased, so this style of working doesn't work. Games need more people, cost more and therefore need higher returns. I think 2013 was really the year we started to see the shift from Japan Studio with Puppeteer, but more realistically Knack and the PS4. 

As much Japan Studio being closed still sucks, I don't think it's surprising. None of their internally big games were commercial successes outside of Astro Bot VR. So it's no wonder they basically did a reboot and kept Asobi and moved the external team to Xdev.

Even if they had kept Japan Studio around, I don't think the output you see today would be any different: their main work would've been more or less the same. They would've been connected to Rise of Ronin, Tokon and Death Stranding (which is what Xdev are), and they would've release Astro Bot (which Asobi did). Even Maybe we would have another first party game from then, but there's no way of knowing.

With direction Japan Studio could give us the AA releases we need so much nowdays to complemet the AAA long dev times.

I guess Sonys playbook this gen raise price > close studio > raise price > close studio >

https://blog.playstation.com/2026/03/27/new-price-changes-for-ps5-ps5-pro-and-playstation-portal-remote-player/

Utterly pathetic at this point. The digital edition launched at £360 here and it’ll now be £520. Best gen to be a launch adopter lol.