Team Asobi, the Tokyo-based game studio behind the Astro Bot series of games, has officially become part of PlayStation Studios. The studio also revealed a new logo, Twitter and Instagram social channels, and mentioned that it will be “spreading its wings and growing bigger.”
Team Asobi is the newest internal studio within the PlayStation Studios family!
Read a note from the team behind PS5 charmer Astro’s Playroom: https://t.co/I5RPtrwoti pic.twitter.com/aAnYUqQjwv
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) June 2, 2021
Founded in 2012 under Sony’s Japan Studio, Team Asobi created The Playroom for the PlayStation 4, which utilized the PlayStation Camera and new DualShock 4 controller. The team would then go on to develop Astro Bot Rescue Mission for PlayStation VR, and Astro’s Playroom for PlayStation 5. Astro’s Playroom comes pre-installed on every PS5 console and features references to many prominent Sony IPs such as God of War and The Last of Us, in addition to being a broad celebration of PlayStation history.
The majority of the team is Japanese, with several members coming from other countries such as England, Germany, Korea, and Spain. The team states that this mixed background “help[s] us create games that are universal”. Technology, they say, is also a key unifying factor, as many “Asobis”—their term for Team Asobi members—have “a real love affair with tech” as seen in many of their games. They even hint that the next game may further utilize the features of the DualSense controller, mentioning that they are “continuing to enjoy experimenting with it at this very moment.”
The news of Team Asobi’s official entry into the PlayStation Studios group comes after several months of high-profile departures from the now effectively defunct Japan Studio, of which Team Asobi was a part. After Sony announced that Japan Studio would be reorganized and “re-centered” around Team Asobi, SIE saw the departure of Bloodborne producers Masaaki Yamagiwa and Teruyuki Toriyama, as well as Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, who went on to found his own company, Bokeh Game Studio. PlayStation Studios Head Hermen Hulst states, however, that Japanese developers and games will continue to be an “extremely important” part of Sony.
[Source: PlayStation Blog, Twitter]
