SCE Japan Studio

Lore & Background

Sony Computer Entertainment was founded in Tokyo on 16 November 1993, jointly established by Sony and Sony Music Entertainment Japan. The studio was run similar to Sony Music Entertainment Japan during its first few years, with producers seeking out creative talent and nurturing them to help develop new games. Shuhei Yoshida oversaw the company from 1996 through 2000. Yoshida started creating teams and hired for them, while simultaneously assisting other developers for Sony-published exclusives; said teams included Sugar & Rockets, Arc Entertainment and Contrail.

These teams were consolidated into the company in 2000. Sony's internal development team also developed original titles such as Ape Escape and The Legend of Dragoon, with dedicated teams led by Fumito Ueda and Keiichiro Toyama; another such team, Polys Entertainment, was spun off as Polyphony Digital due to the success of Gran Turismo. The studio was moved to SCE Worldwide Studios in 2005, rebranding afterwards as Japan Studio; the brand first appeared in Genji: Days of the Blade, the studio's first game for the PlayStation 3.

Though Japan Studio's output during the PlayStation 2 years were strong, it struggled to release successful games during the PlayStation 3 era. Yoshida took over full control of Japan Studio in 2008. To get Japan Studio back on track, Sony brought in Allen Becker, who had been working at Santa Monica Studio, to lead Japan Studio. Becker made several tough calls of the 40-some games that were in development at the time of his arrival to terminate development of those unlikely to be successful and implemented similar development processes as Sony's Western studios.

Across late 2020 and early 2021, several notable Japan Studio employees announced that they were departing the company. In a statement, Sony stated that, as of 1 April 2021, Japan Studio would be re-centered around Team Asobi to build on the popularity of Astro's Playroom. Team Asobi was moved into PlayStation Studios in June 2021.

Reader's Guide

Japan Studio was formed by several internal development teams, with all of them being disbanded, reorganised, or spun off into a separate studio. The studio's unnamed main unit developed the Ape Escape and LocoRoco series as well as individual titles like The Legend of Dragoon and Fantavision. Polys Entertainment, a unit headed by Kazunori Yamauchi dedicated to racing games, was spun off as Polyphony Digital. Team Asobi, established in 2012 by Nicolas Doucet, worked on the Astro Bot series and was formally spun off into a separate studio in April 2021.

Team Ico, headed by Fumito Ueda, developed Ico and Shadow of the Colossus and was disbanded after Ueda departed and established genDESIGN during development of The Last Guardian. Team Gravity, formed in 1999 by former members of Team Silent, developed games in the Siren and Gravity Rush series and was led by Keiichiro Toyama, who left Japan Studio in late 2020 to form Bokeh Game Studio.