What a Clown. Comparing the closure of a whole Studio with different teams to finally ONE REMAINING TEAM releasing something after all these years. Great Bro, Amazing reasoning. Im sure you were the Valedictorian in your School! Amazing interpretation skills
Are you really that sad that the three other teams other than Asobi are out?
Keiichiro Toyama (Siren, Gravity Rush) went on to make Slitterhead, which looks like absolute shit; Tsutomu Kouno (LocoRoco) had failed to release anything at the Japan Studio since 2008 up until his contract expired in 2021; and the remaining team were the ones responsible for the Knack series.
Maybe you're the clown here who doesn't know shit about PlayStation and the Japan Studio in the first place.
These two persons leaving/being fired doesn't mean that the whole team where they were left/were fired.
In addition to this, the teams in Japan Studio were pretty fluid: other than a few heads, most team members moved from a team to another as needed.
With the restructuring, in addition to the downsizing and giving their 2nd party publishing+support their own studio (in the same building they were, the Japanese SIE HQ building) the different internal development, they merged the remaining devs of the different Japan Studio internal development teams into Team Asobi.
As can be seen in Moby Games, most of the people who worked in Astro Bot also worked in games from other teams like the Team Siren/Gravity games, the Team Ico games, Puppeteer, Knack, etc. As already happened in the previous Team Asobi stuff (made with a smaller team).
Same goes with the people who remained there in their XDEV (2nd party publishing+support) and after the restructuring released Death Stranding Director's Cut, Rise of the Ronin or Stellar Blade (and soon Convallaria, Lost Soul Aside and Death Stranding 2): most of them worked in previous Japan Studios games, in some cases internally developed and in other cases in 2nd party games.
They didn't shut down the studio, simply restructured it downsizing it, merging their different internal development teams into one of them, and separated their 2nd party XDEV team (as previously did with the EU and NA XDEV teams) into its own office. Both teams also got new offices in the same building they always have been because after the restructuring they had plans to grow them after cleaning the house. In case of the 2nd party team, because now they handle not only the 2nd party games developed in Japan, but also 2nd party games developed in the other Asian countries.
And well, it isn't something new to separate or merge these two teams, or to rebrand them: they already did it multiple times in the past since were created in 1993/1994.
Resi 5 isn't great but not awful and even good at times if seen as purely an action game. If I remember it even has on the fly weapon switching which makes it somewhat superior to 4 in a couple ways. Better than 6 for sure, not as all round polished as 4, but 4 was a once in 10 year masterpiece. Never played Final Fantasy 13 but always heard it was a pretty but linear RPG. A linear game in the same generation as corridor shooters which was always a meme back then
Lots of good Japanese games on the Wii, PS3 and 360. In fact 360 is still probably the best system for playing Japanese shmups, except for the Saturn, to this day.
Capcom can release Resident Evil 5, a supposed terrible Japanese game from that era, on any future platform they want and it will sell.
As I remember RE5 was the best selling game in the series back then.
Shawn Layden is the David Jaffe of Phil Spencers.
Good one, but Shawn Layden never has been in charge of the gaming division of a console maker.
