I'd like to weigh in on the Japan Studio discussion.
First, let's look at the facts we do have:
- October 2019
- SIE Japan Asia president Astushi Morita retires. (While not directly related to SIE Japan Studio, I figured this was worth mentioning.)
- February 2020
- Nicolas Doucet promoted to studio director of SIE Japan Studio.
- April 2020
- SIE Japan Studio establishes External Development Department, renames several departments, and abolishes Product Technology and Business Development departments.
- June 2020
- July 2020
- Hot Shots Golf / Everybody's Golf developer Clap Hanz, which has never developed a game that was not published by SIE, trademarks "Clap Hanz Golf" in Japan, leading to speculation that its next golf game will not be published by SIE.
- August 2020
- Keiichiro Toyama, Kazunobu Sato, and Junya Okura leave SIE Japan Studio to form Bokeh Game Studio. (This is not officially announced until December.)
- September 2020
- Demon's Souls gameplay trailer. Although in the original announcement trailer, the SIE Japan Studio logo is no longer featured. This becomes the trend for all future trailers.
- November 2020
- Astro's Playroom gameplay trailer. There is now a Team Asobi logo, but no SIE Japan Studio logo.
- Astro's Playroom released. Startup only features Team Asobi logo. Credits mention Team Asobi, but never once mention SIE Japan Studio.
- Demon's Souls released. Startup only features Bluepoint Games logo. Credits, however, do mention SIE Japan Studio.
- December 2020
- Teruyuki Toriyama leaves SIE Japan Studio.
- Gavin Moore's LinkedIn profile image updated with the "#OpenForWork" hashtag, which is a LinkedIn feature users can enable to show recruiters and others that they are open to work.
OK, so quite a bit has happened over the past year. Though it should be noted it is normal for developers to leave studios for new or better opportunities. We see this with prominent names quite often:
- Devil May Cry 5 battle director Ryota Suzuki left Capcom to join Square Enix and work on Final Fantasy XVI.
- Dragon Quest Builders director Kazuya Niinou left Square Enix to form Type-Moon Studio BB and remake Fate/EXTRA.
- Fumito Ueda left SIE Japan Studio to form genDesign.
- Kenichiro Takaki left Marvelous to work as the general manager of console games at Cygames and work on Project Awakening as a producer.
- Monster Hunter World: Iceborne director Daisuke Ichihara left Capcom to lead ILCA's Kyoto Development Division.
- etc.
The concern with SIE Japan Studio is why, exactly, are these developers leaving? And I think the answer is that SIE Japan Studio is shifting its focus to being mainly a support studio for externally-developed first-party games (perhaps with less input from SIE Japan Studio staff compared to the past). This is primarily because:
- The establishment of an External Development Department in April.
- Even Astro's Playroom, a game developed by SIE Japan Studio's in-house Team Asobi, doesn't mention SIE Japan Studio in the opening or ending credits.
- The "Clap Hanz Golf" trademark does not contradict this, especially since we can only speculate as to what that trademark is for (it could be branding for all we know). Though it would be odd for SIE Japan Studio to shift focus to second-party games and not continue its relationship with Clap Hanz, which is already a second-party developer.
- All the jobs they are currently hiring for are for the Technical and Management departments, none of which are directly game development-related. The only job in their Game department is for a localization test manager.
The good news in this case is that it would pretty much be what SIE Japan Studio has been doing for most of its lifetime. The bad news is that it'll mean less games like Siren, The Last Guardian, Gravity Rush, and Knack (lol), and mainly just Astro or whatever Team Asobi cooks up from SIE Japan Studio's internal development staff (which can be good or bad depending on your preferences).
In any case, we can only speculate what will become of SIE Japan Studio for now, but I don't think it's all doom and gloom quite yet. If they can become a Japan-based XDev and put out more titles developed by FromSoftware, Marvelous, etc. in the same manner that Sony XDev (Europe) is working with Housemarque, Sumo Digital, Lucid Games, etc., then I'm cool with that.