It has been an almost brutal bloodletting from Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan during the last couple of months, while the legendary Japan Studio is being re-organised into Team Asobi. Previously, heavy hitters as Masaaki Yamagiwa (Bloodborne producer), Keiichiro Toyama (Silent Hill, Siren), Junya Okura (Siren, Gravity Rush), Kazunobu Sato (Puppeteer, The Last Guardian), Teruyuki Toriyama (Bloodborne, Demon's Souls remake), Ryo Sogabe (Video Manager on Sony Japan Studio) and Masami Yamamoto (Tenchu series producer, Bloodborne) has left, and now we can add yet another two names to that list.
The most noticeable is Bloodborne Senior Producer Kentaro Motomura who tweets:
"As of the end of March today, I have been retiring from SIE, which I have been indebted to for many years. I can only thank you for being involved in many works such as Dark Cloud, Wild Arms, Soul Sacrifice, Bloodborne, Everybody's Golf, etc. I will continue to produce games in the future, so thank you for your continued support. Thank you very much!"
Then we have Shinsuke Saito, animator and character designer for the Gravity Rush series (also director for Gravity Rush 2 from 2017). He tweets very shortly; "I'm leaving SIE Japan Studio today".
It goes without saying that it's a huge amount of veterans and competence that has left Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan during this time and it remains to be seen what this means for Sony's Japanese output of games in the future. The restructure process officially started on April 1.
Thanks Destructoid
