Good to see him at least recognizing this. The game is brilliant and a breathe of fresh air. We need more of these types of games.
3 years ago all of you people were crying that Jim and Hermen ""killed"" Gravity Rush and Ape Escape to focus on a tech demo series. You're only now jumping into the Astro Bot bandwagon.
It's so important for him that he scrapped a new VR game, where this IP became relevant.
Japan Studio was not developing Gravity Rush or Ape Scape (at least for console) or any VR game, they were developing mobile games. Hermen (and Jim) did cancel all these mobile games, restructured the studio, did greenlight this game to put all of them to work on it.
They did a great job making a masterpiece that is selling very well, so obviously he recognizes their job.
Didn't this dude actually shut down Japan Studio? ..now he's trying to sweet talk his ass back to Team Asobi???
Hulst was the man who initiated Team Asobi separation from Japan Studio and was the main driving force behing them and Astro in general. Astro Bot was 2D game from the start too.
No, he didn't shut down Japan Studio and didn't separate Team Asobi from it.
He restructured and rebranded it. He merged the different internal development teams of Japan Studio into one of them, Team Asobi, and as SIE previously did in EU and US, they branched out their 2nd party publishing/support team XDEV from JP to become their own studio now part of the global XDEV team. Both teams got new and bigger offices in the same SIE Japan HQ building where the Japan Studio one was to grow.
Team Asobi, who released Astro Bot after the restructuring, are from Japan Studio. Before the restructuring they were working on different mobile games, which got cancelled by Hermen (and Jim). The woman in charge of these mobile games business / did put them to work on that was fired by them and now works for Xbox (the former studio boss was also fired).
XDEV Japan, who released Death Stranding Director's Cut, Stellar Blade and Rise of the Ronin after the restructuring, are from Japan Studio. They are now in charge not only of the 2nd party Japanese games, but also from the rest of Asia. They are working on Lost Soul Aside, Convallaria, Death Stranding 2 or Physint.
It is not the first time Japan Studio got rebranded, restructured, changes of divisio or that their internal development teams and 2nd party publishing team merges or separates. It happened multiple times before.
If he was that smart he wouldn't be commissioning so many horizon games
Horizon Zero Dawn was SIE's best selling game ever. It would be stupid to don't make more Horizon games.
Money speaks louder than words. If the IP were so important to him, he would spend 1/20 of the money invested in Bungie and would:
- Port the original Astro Bot Rescue Mission for PSVR 2
- Double the size of Asobi so they can work in the VR version of this one, too.
He didn't fund either cos he doesn't care. He's just bandwagoning after his epic GaaS failure.
Destiny made more money than all Japan Studio games together. Japan Studio was a money pit that in 3 decades wasn't abe to develop a single sales hit. He restructured that studio, cancelled the mobile games they were working on and greenlighted this game that seems is going to be the best selling internally developed Japan Studio game ever.
He gave to both Team Asobi and XDEV Japan (the two halfs of Japan studio, the one dedicated to internal developed games and the one dedicated to Asian 2nd party games & support) new offices where they could grow after there restructuring. Team Asobi was planned to grow until almost double in size and started to grow but decided to temporally stop.