Shuhei Yoshida, former president of SIE Worldwide Studios, says the Japanese team made excellent AA games, but Sony wanted bigger projects.

The closure of SIE Japan Studio in 2021 was a significant loss for the video game industry. This legendary team created titles such as Patapon, Ape Escape, LocoRoco, and Gravity Rush; they even collaborated with FromSoftware on Bloodborne as co-producers and project supervisors. Now, Shuhei Yoshida, former president of SIE Worldwide Studios (who held the position until 2019, before leaving Sony for good in early 2025), has looked back on that period and shared what may have led to the studio’s demise: while they made excellent AA games, the company wanted larger-scale projects.

Yoshida shared this thought in an interview with Japanese media outlet AV Watch (via Insider Gaming). Speaking about this stage of his career, the specialist recalled: “I was in charge of first-party titles, so I was asked to make a game that was powerful enough to sell hardware. When you do something like that, the company puts a lot of pressure on you. That’s what the company asked for, and although we had to do it, the size of the development and the sales required got bigger and bigger.”

He continued: “In this case, it was difficult to do it with the Japanese development system. Japanese creators come up with very creative and interesting ideas, but they inevitably end up being ‘AA-sized.’” Yoshida added: “That’s why after I stepped down as president of Worldwide Studios, Japan Studio ceased to exist. At that time, Japan Studio was a ‘team that was good at making AA games.’ In this case, it probably didn’t meet the company’s expectations of a first-party studio.”

Yoshida further noted: “However, I think [the decision to close Japan Studio] was also influenced by the globalization of the company.” He added: “There was a time when even if we made an ‘interesting game in a Japanese style’, the company didn’t support it easily, and it was very difficult to achieve. That was the period between PS3 and PS4. I was president before PS5, and even then it was a tough time.”

Classic Japan Studio games are making a comeback

During the latest Nintendo Direct, many gamers were reminded of the excellent work of Japan Studio. Nintendo made a surprise announcement that Patapon 1+2 Replay and Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots will be coming to Nintendo Switch (as well as PS5 and PC), games originally developed by the now-defunct Sony studio, and are now coming to the hybrid console in new versions. What could be behind this surprising move? It’s not that PlayStation is expanding these IPs to other consoles, but that Bandai Namco is responsible for publishing them.

Source: 3DJuegos