The closure of Sony's Japan Studio "wasn't necessarily a surprise" to former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden, who likened it to "pruning a bonsai". Japan Studio was responsible for some of PlayStation's biggest hits over the years, from Ape Escape and Legend of Dragoon, to Shadow of the Colossus and Gravity Rush . In 2021 the studio was effectively disbanded , with Astro Bot's internal Team Asobi going independent as a PlayStation studio.
Speaking with IGN Japan at Gamescom Asia, Layden discussed the end of Japan Studio and "legacy malaise". "That was sad," he said. "It wasn't necessarily a surprise.
I love Allan [Becker, former head of Japan Studio], and he worked really hard, but there was so much legacy malaise. It's tough when a studio hasn't had a hit for a while, then they forget how that feels. You know, if you have a hit once it's like a drug, man, you're chasing the next one, right? And then if you don't have that for a while, you forget what it felt like, and then you start to forget how to get there.
"There were probably two roads. One was the road they took. The other road was a real tough-love program.
And maybe that's what the Team Asobi thing is. It's like pruning a bonsai, right? You get it back down to its nub and see if you can grow back out again." In 2017 Japan Studio released Knack 2 and a year later Team Asobi released VR game Astro Bot Rescue Mission.
Besides these, the studio was mostly used for support work and left without a hit project to work on. Lay.