Former PlayStation US boss says Japan Studio closure was ‘sad’ but not surprising

Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden says that while he was saddened by the decision to close down Sony‘s Japan Studio, he wasn’t particularly surprised by it.

In an interview with IGN Japan, Layden – who during a 30-year career at Sony served as CEO of SIE America and chairman of Worldwide Studios – was asked how he felt about Sony’s decision to close Japan Studio back in April 2021.

He replied that the decision wasn’t entirely unexpected, given that Japan Studio had struggled to find great success in the period leading up to its closure.

“That was sad,” Layden said, adding: “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 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.”

Sony reorganised Japan Studio into “a new organisation” on April 1, 2021, and the vast majority of its development staff was let go, as VGC had exclusively reported a month earlier.

The iconic developer behind Ape Escape, Gravity Rush and Knack saw the vast majority of its development staff leave after their annual contracts were not renewed ahead of the company’s next business year.

Team Asobi continued as a standalone studio within Sony Japan, joined by some Japan Studio staff. The studio released the critically acclaimed Astro Bot last month.

Layden recently told VGC he believes the games console power arms race has plateaued, and that a majority of consumers are not interested in marginally more powerful machines.