Former PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida has revealed that the absence of a market for AA games – games that would have a higher budget than indie titles but lower than AAA releases – was the reason behind the closure of Sony’s Japan Studio. Speaking on the Sacred Symbols PlayStation podcast (transcription via VGC), Yoshida spoke about his time working with Japanese studios on major releases.
One of the subjects Yoshida touched on was the lack of major AAA and AA releases from Japanese studios for the PS5. He cites the fact that he wasn’t able to have a successful live service game developed as something of a failure for him.
“During my time, people give me credit, but one of the things I was not successful at was having a successful service game, and the other thing is I was not able to have amazingly successful games made in Japan,” said Yoshida. “Other than Gran Turismo, we had many great products but didn’t really have many triple-A-level successful products. That became more and more important as the big games became bigger – the indies filled the gap, and the double-A market seems to have disappeared.”
The statement is important since, as Yoshida noted, a lot of the games developed by Japan Studio were described as sitting in that AA niche. This included games like the Gravity Rush franchise and Knack, older lesser-known releases like Soul Sacrifice, and even certified classics like Ico and Ape Escape.
“Most of the IPs that Japan Studio had were in that smaller double-A sized group, and the market became really difficult for these kinds of games,” said Yoshida. “For example, after Gravity Rush 2, [director Keiichiro Toyama] tried to come up with a new concept, but we were not able to greenlight any of his new concepts, even though they were really interesting.”
Yoshida said that Toyama’s ideas for games wouldn’t be supported by Sony moving forward since the company was more focused on releasing big blockbuster AAA games.
“In my mind, I remember his product looked like something the company wouldn’t support, the company was looking for triple-A titles, and we really struggled to get the game going,” said Yoshida. “So when Japan Studios was shut down, and he became independent, he was able to create and release Slitterhead.”
Yoshida has been quite vocal about 31 years with Sony over the last couple of months. He officially left the company back in January, and has since revealed details about how he transitioned into working with indie game developers while pushing back against PlayStation’s live service priorities at the time. Ultimately, Sony has had mixed results with its attempts at live service games, with Helldivers 2 doing really well for the company, while others like Concord would crash and burn.
With Japan Studio having been shut down back in 2021, the only remnant we have these days is Team Asobi, who has been doing excellent work with Astro Bot. For more details, check out our review of the platformer.
