The PlayStation official website has recently removed Japan Studio from its list of Sony’s Studios, which includes Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, and many others. As captured by Internet Archive, replacing the Japan Studio is now Team Asobi – previously division within the Japan Studio, who recently shipped the PS5 pack-in game Astro’s Playroom.
It comes as not much of a surprise, as Sony recently confirmed that SIE Japan Studio had been shut down, following the laying off of a number of staff within the studio and a change of organizational structure earlier this year. Team Asobi was recently instated as new full-fledged studio. SIE Japan Studio has been an integral part of Sony since its humble beginnings with highly-rated games like Ape Escape, Gravity Rush, and Shadow of the Colossus, just to name a few.
Sources familiar with the matter have spoken to a bunch of outlets on the massive lay-offs, who believe that Japan Studio wasn’t profitable as other studios within Sony had far more lucrative IPs. This directly echoes the sentiments of previous report which stated that Sony’s insistence on blockbuster exclusives is causing unrest within the studios.