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Sony Wanted Japan Studio To Develop Big Budget Games

Gabriel Stanford-Reisinger 0 Comments
Japan Studio

Japan Studio, the beloved first-party PlayStation studio behind games like PaRappa The Rapper, Ape Escape, Everbody’s Golf, and Gravity Rush, was meant to develop big budget games. Outside of dedicated development, it also co-developed FromSoftware’s Bloodborne and Ghost of Tsushima and was the parent behind Team Ico, which made Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian.

Silent Hill and Gravity Rush creator Keiichiro Toyama revealed the plans in an interview with VGC. The game maker, though, didn’t want to be bound by big budgets and just wanted to make “original” games, which don’t necessarily require inflated budgets.

“With Sony, there was an increasing motive to make more highly budgeted games, and it wanted to go that way with the Japan Studio brand. My motive was always to create original games. I feel I can do this without a massive budget.”

While Japan Studio was involved in big releases, by the end of its life, it was mostly a co-developer of successful projects and any project it made by itself wasn’t as much of a commercial success, which could be why the studio was closed down back in 2021 after 30 years of operation.

Toyama departed shortly before the studio went under and formed Bokeh Game Studio where he is working on its debut game, Slitterhead.

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Chances That The Last Guardian Will Be Worth The Wait?

Ben-Dutka 22 Comments

"Vaporware" continues to be an overused (and occasionally misused) term in the industry.

But The Last Guardian might qualify, at least at certain points in its long and troubled history.

After first being revealed way back in…what is it, 2009?…we only got vague and sometimes unsettling updates, like when Fumito Ueda left Sony and decided to keep working on the project in a freelance/contractor capacity. Then we kept hearing from Sony boss Shuhei Yoshida that the project hit snag after snag and eventually, it had to be pushed into the PlayStation 4 generation. None of this was exactly promising, until we got all excited again after last year's resurrection at E3 .

But once again, Guardian has slipped away. We heard very little about it since last summer and at this point, we have to question: What the hell is going on? But perhaps more importantly, if and when it does show up, can it possibly live up to the hype? It seems to me that the game was unveiled way, way too early (even though I know there were plenty of unforeseen circumstances), and I tend to agree with Bethesda's Todd Howard when he says we really need to scale this back. Stop announcing games eons before they're ready.

It really is problematic, as he says. And if the project goes south, as it clearly did in Guardian 's case, the issues are only amplified. I'm guessing gamers are expecting nothing less than masterful genius when the title finally arrives, and I'm just not sure that's what we're going to get. Yes, ICO and Shadow of the Colossus are two of my favorite games ever and I have infinite faith in Ueda, but how can I not be worried? And how can my expectations not be through the roof at the same time?

All I have to say is, this game better return at some point this year. A concrete launch date at E3 2016 is a must , Sony.