How Sony learned to stop worrying and love the weirdest games
The original PlayStation is one of the greatest video game consoles of all time. That is a fact. Sony Computer Entertainment Japan (aka, Japan Studio) is one of the most important game developers of all time. That is also a fact. Japan Studio closed its doors indefinitely on April 1st, 2021. That is a tragedy. Let’s get into it.
The Real PlayStation All-Stars
The Sony PlayStation would release in late ‘94 / mid ‘95 and would later blow my face off in 1998. The world, and my face, would never recover. And, Japan Studio was steering the… ICBM… directly at… my face? our living rooms? These guys were the coolest. Most notably, these guys had nothing to lose. Sony had very little faith that their Nintendo-less game console would make a splash, but those expectations would be exactly what would save the system.
Schrodinger’s Pressure™ (“no pressure, because we know you’re going to fail” vs “all the pressure, because you’ve got to make this a success”) would be the kindling needed to kick-start some wild experimentation that would set the foundation for the next 15 years. Emboldened marketing teams across the world would push for Sony to pull stunts to attract more of a young adult audience—like hosting massive pre-release play sessions in dance halls and techno venues. And it was this spirit that would bleed into many games in the console’s library, though very few are as iconic and prolific as Sony’s internal team. I promise this all gets to the PlayStation 3 soon enough.
In total, Japan Studio would be responsible for over 200 entries in the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 libraries, as well as nearly 100 PSP and Vita titles, but less than 40 PlayStation 3 games. How was it that the studio responsible for iconic generational classics such as PaRappa the Rapper, Everybody’s Golf (Hotshots Golf), Gran Turismo, Ape Escape, and Beyond the Beyond (kidding) would start to lose its footing in the seventh generation?
Sorry about that Beyond the Beyond thing, Takahashi Shugo-san. It was my first JRPG, sure, but I can’t even pretend that it was a “good” video game, by any stretch. I guess it was “okay”, but I don’t think anyone should play it in 2025. It would be very irresponsible of me to wave people towards that particular car crash. Maybe… no, I can’t. Forgive me Camelot Software Planning. Golden Sun was pretty good, though.
To be fair, about 7 of those 36 PS3 games were sequels and 5 or 6 were strictly PlayStation Move (remember that thing?), PlayStation Eye (remember THAT thing?), or Sixaxis showcases, essentially bringing the more traditional game release count down to ~23, or 17 if you exclude Japan-only titles.
Notably, Genji: Days of the Blade (a PS3 launch title) would be the first use of the name “Japan Studio” officially on one of their titles, due to a 2005 rebrand after shacking up with SCE Worldwide Studios (aka PlayStation Studios these days).
So, What Happened?
Back to the question I built this hastily written article around: What happened to Japan Studio? Why this slow-down and drop off in terms of staying power? As much as it pains me, no one that I know talks about Folklore anymore. Depending on who you talk to, there are a few different factors at play back in the mid 00’s. Yoshida Shuhei-san (yes, that very sweet man who was also in that Xbox diss track of a PlayStation 4 advert), who oversaw the team from ‘96 to ‘00, seemed to think that Japan Studio’s weakness during its PS3 days was a direct result of unclear vision, that he claims was the development practice of the day in Japan at the time. Less of a captain at the wheel and more of an everyone plays this Club Cranium type situation. Others, like Allen Becker, Studio Head of Japan Studio from 2011 - 2020, attributed the dark spot on the studio’s legacy as being a by-product of complacency and an inability to keep up with the cutting edge of development tools at the time. Alessio Summerfield, an unqualified arm-chair developer and writer of this article, posited that all of the articles he read seemed to also paint a picture of a team focused on niche experiences tied to hardware gimmicks during this time. Though, that being said, Gravity Rush (aka Gravity Daze in Japan) probably wouldn’t exist without the Vita’s hardware eccentricities.
So, coming up for air after that thinly veiled Wikipedia fact regurgitation, weren’t they still being experimental and “weird” with this new hardware? Isn’t being experimental inherently tied to “failure” and harsh lessons about how webcam-based card games may not be super lucrative in 2007? That’s true, sure. But something wasn’t quite hitting, sales were low, and Ueda Fumito-san was only two years into his eight-year The Last Guardian development bender. And what was the deal with that one game that Yoshida-san really disliked that Kajii Takeshi-san pitched to (checks notes) FromSoftware?
Demon's Souls
Yeah… so, credit where credit is due, we do owe Japan Studio a round of applause for Demon’s Souls. It is true that Sony did not want to publish the game outside of Japan, thus kicking off the chain of events that led to Atlus publishing the title in the good ol’ U.S. of A and Namco Bandai publishing in PAL territories. But, even with Sony’s reticence, the entire pitch of a dark fantasy role-playing game more akin to From’s King’s Field titles, but with the power of the PlayStation 3, did stem directly from Producers at Japan Studio. Unfortunately, Takeshi-san would pass away in 2013, but a loving special thanks was given to him in the 2020 Demon’s Souls remake.
Anyway, this is where I just want to shout out that From had a great relationship with Sony, considering that the company went all-in on the PlayStation with their first big commercial title (King’s Field) and stayed primarily on the platform for at least a half dozen games after. A big part of their being championed internally at Sony was Japan Studio’s own staff. So, while the studio may have been on wobbly footing during the PS3, they certainly inadvertently changed gaming history for the better during those years, too.
Even with Japan Studio’s support, Sony’s overall mismanagement of the handling of From’s soon-to-be cult masterpiece would ultimately cost Sony millions in the loss of potential publishing rights for Dark Souls and Elden Ring.
While Japan Studio would eventually hit their stride just as the PlayStation 4 era was kicking off, resulting in titles like Bloodborne (which was also the result of Japan Studio’s pitching the concept to FromSoft), The Last Guardian, Gravity Rush 2, and the critically acclaimed Knack duology, it would also be short lived.
Astro Bot and Beyond
The Playroom, The Playroom VR, and Astro Bot Rescue Mission would see Japan Studio back to spotlighting new Sony hardware in fun and creative ways, and with their distinctive playful style. And, with the launch of the PlayStation 5, the Astro Bot characters (for lack of a better identifier) would make a fourth appearance in Astro’s Playroom, celebrating nearly all of Japan Studio’s output in a very joyful way. But Astro would also ride into Japan Studio on a pale horse, wielding a scythe, and calling himself Deathbot.
When Japan Studio would close its doors in 2021, the staff would be absorbed into Team Asobi, a team spun off of PlayStation Studios, to exclusively work on the Astro Bot series. Thus turning the original movers, shakers, dreamers, and let’s-figure-it-out-as-we-go-ers into the museum curators of their own past works. Odd how that worked out.
Just three weeks after the studio’s closure, PlayStation would insist that it had every intention to continue publishing “experimental” games alongside their slow growing (sometimes forcibly so) Marvel-esque (complete with silly opening logo reveal) blockbusters. And, while many remain hopeful, others started lamenting the perceived death of Sony’s more fun-loving and creatively-curious group nearly immediately. I find myself somewhere in the middle, personally.
In short, I wanted to draft this piece to celebrate one of the best studios and their work on some of the best game systems ever made. While their output during the PS3’s lifespan may not be the work most remember, and may even have kicked off a series of events that ultimately led to their closure, it still brought a smile to my face to see the little LocoRoco dudes rolling around my TV back in the late 2000s. Titles like Echochrome and Siren: Blood Curse made a huge impact on me back then, as well.
Put simply, even Japan Studio’s B-Sides were stronger than most studios’ flagship material. That’s something to celebrate and it was that punk-adjacent spirit that really defined the PlayStation brand and library for me in my youth. Go Japan Studio, go Japanese games, go old PlayStations, and go get to playing some of these gems, already!