Gabriel Stanford-ReisingerAstro Bot released yesterday and its developer, Team Asobi, is naturally very excited to welcome fans into the continuation of the PS5 tech demo. Lucky for us, it seems the Japanese studio is looking to fill a specific niche that Sony’s flagship console simply fails to keep going — non-hyper-realistic games.
A lengthy report by VGC shares the info, with studio head Nicolas Doucet stating that they’re looking at filling a gap within the internal PlayStation market. It’s no secret that the PlayStation line has gone from slightly more lighthearted content to more mature mainstays, AKA going from classics like Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper to The Last of Us and Horizon.
This leaves Sony’s first-party teams with no one to fill that gap. The gap of more cartoonish games that have a broader appeal. That’s what Doucet’s pivoted Team Asobi into and so far it’s led to great success.
“If you consider the history of PlayStation and how every studio has positioned themselves, it’s interesting that – and this is also what I show management – as the audience of PlayStation grew, a lot of these [studios] went from making cartoon games to a little bit more mature, hyper-realistic games.
“That’s when we at Team Asobi as a studio decided that we really wanted to fill that gap, that used to be the gap filled by other studios 20-25 years ago. That’s really where we want to be: all ages, colourful etc. Even if we made a horror game, it would be a funny horror game.”
