2023-12-29 11:00:00
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Could it be Microsoft who was right? The North American giant has completely modified his way of approaching the console marketfocusing more on one game as service side (abandoning the sale of physical consoles/games in favor of various services, such as Game Pass), and Sony followed suit, trying to catch up in this area.. This decision had consequencesleading in particular to the fermeture de Japan Studio, one of Sony’s most prestigious studios. Today, Playstation’s marketing strategy focuses more on game as service like XBox, instead of the exclusive games that allowed them to dominate the console market.
Japan Studio, the fathers of many nuggets
Today, Japan Studio’s original games are partly unknown to the general public. Not that the titles have fallen into oblivion, but unless you are passionate regarding video games, it is not not necessarily easy to make the link between these different games because no major license for the console has been created by Japan Studio.
However, from their first creations, Japan Studio had done very well. Their Kurushi’s first game is a puzzle game (a puzzle game) which has not necessarily been very successful, but is considered a little nugget by fans of the genre. Japan Studio then followed up with Ape Escape, a platform game today considered as the 23rd best game on the Playstation according to Metacritic ratings. The real tour de force of this game is that it is a PEGI 3 gameor a game whose mission was to appeal to both Playstation’s target audience (teenagers/young adults) but also address children. To compare with a more well-known license, Ape Escape user rating is the same as Spyro The Dragon.
Japan Studio will continue this momentum, with other Ape Escape games (less well rated but still considered good games), then two other pretty cute licenses: LocoRoco and Patapon. Each of them will have its little success and its fans, and even if they are not considered major licenses, they maintain an excellent reputation. Obviously, not all of the studio’s games have been bangers, and history has done well to forget Bleach: Soul Resurrección and Kung Fu Rider (sorry if these names have awakened old trauma).
Bangers within bangers
How ? A trailer that focuses on gameplay? What is this devilry?
The excellent reputation of Japan Studio has not not built only on games labeled Japan Studio. This studio was so big that it contained several other smaller studios, but just as talented. The best known example is without Team Icocreator of jeux Ico, Shadow of the Colossus et The Last Guardian. However since they are games playing heavily on the platform, he is still easy to feel the Japan Studio touch.
However, other studios have created much more unexpected games. I study them Project: Siren gave birth to the licence Forbidden Sirensurvival horror that might compete with the big names of the genre: Resident Evil but especially Silent Hill with which it will often be compared. The plot is quite simple, you find yourself on a mysterious island with the only instruction not to go out when the siren sounds. This silence will have same right to a film adaptationand the latter is rather well received by the public. The film does not didn’t have a big budgetet struggles at times to transcribe the tension of the games (at the same time it’s difficult to be as involved when you see the heroine come out in the film, as when it’s the player who has to make this decision with his controller), but ultimately remains a much better experience than other adaptations. For many players, it was the overly “Japanese” atmosphere of the game that prevented it from having the same success as Silent Hillthe average Westerner misses too many references/winks.
I study them Project Siren will also release the Gravity Rush licensestill considered today as one of the licenses which did not have the success it deserved (and yet, it was successful, but not enough according to a lot of players). Perhaps this is the game to play for those who would like to discover Japan Studio games (no we didn’t forget that we talked regarding Shadow of the Colossus and Ico just before… Gravity Rush is good at this point, but do the other two too if you can).
Legends never die
Japan Studio a closed its doors in 2021 on a decision by Sony. Almost 3 years later, fans still haven’t digested this, as proven by the tweet above*, seen more than a million times, and which for a few hours put Japan Studio back in the X trends (Twitter). Following this closure, Sony stopped producing its own games to concentrate on game services.
*Putting Bloodborne and Demon’s Soul on this list seemed a bit off-topic to me. Japan Studio certainly collaborated with From Software for these games, but the origins of Souls like go back more to King’s Field, another license from which 4 games came. However, 8 years separate the release of King’s Field IV and Demon’s Soul, so we might perhaps say that Japan Studio were among the first outside From Software to see the potential of this license.
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