After having seen incredible levels of critical acclaim for Astro Bot, developer Team Asobi has seemingly started working on its next project. The studio is now staffing up to work on this new game, with its Jobs website listing an opening for a 3D Environment Artist. The role reports directly to the Lead 3D Environment Artist, and applicants are expected to spend at least their first six months at the company working on-site at Tokyo.
While the listing doesn’t go into too many details about this project, some information can be gleaned thanks to mentions of “creating playful and stunning looking environment art for our game”. This might indicate that either Team Asobi is working on a brand new entry in the Astro Bot series, or its new project will at least have a similar tone.
There is also a listing for a Gameplay Programmer that mentions creating “advanced and fun gameplay mechanics around physics engine”, as well as an encouragement to “bring your own game design sense, creativity and humor to these interactions.” The role, reporting to the Lead Gameplay Programmer, has been described in the listing as a mid-level / senior position.
Neither Sony nor Team Asobi have made any official announcements regarding their next project. However, considering the fact that Astro Bot came out back in 2024, the studio is likely to have already begun at least pre-production on a new game.
A sequel to Astro Bot wouldn’t be too surprising, since the 3D platformer even saw praise from PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst during a business update. He praised the title for its universal acclaim, and referred to it as an “emerging IP”.
Sony executive Hiroki Totoki had also expressed enthusiasm for Team Asobi’s work back in February 2025. “At The Game Awards 2024, our first-party title Astro Bot won four categories, including Game of the Year and Best Family Game – the most of any title,” he said, before going on to praise Helldivers 2 as well.
“In addition, the live service game Helldivers 2, which was released in February last year, won Best Ongoing Game and Best Multiplayer Game awards. The fact that titles in genres we are planning to expand in the future, including titles for families and live service games, have received these awards is a major stride towards building a broad title portfolio.”
The last time we heard from Team Asobi was when studio director Nicolas Doucet spoke about how the DualSense controller and the SSD are the best reasons for PS4 owners to finally upgrade to the current-gen PS5. He noted that, while visual upgrades are also important, the more unique features of the PS5 are the true console sellers.
“When you put graphics side-by-side between an end-of-lifecycle PS4 game and early cycle PS5 game, you could argue, to an untrained eye, that it’s hard to see the difference,” said Doucet back in October. “But early on [with PS5] we got the DualSense prototypes, with this haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. And we tried to understand what could be different about having this kind of trigger, so you can simulate pulling something, or cracking something, or crushing something… We tested all of that.”
In the meantime, check out our review of Astro Bot, which is exclusively available on PS5.
