Totobeni said:
sure many peoplelooking forward to them , but just look that , 2 games , one game from the studio who make one game every 4 years , the other one from the team that make a game every 5 years , so yea SCEJ still useless overall.
and if we cut Polyphony Digital ( since they are separated studio with their own building )
SCE Japan Studio is complete worthless studio and don't do shit to support Playstation name in Japan these days aside from some publishing/funding deals.
iirc Japan Studio teams are very small and that just don't work if you want to make HD games , so I guess they need to hire more devs or even buy some small Japanese studios ( many of them just dies like rats these days anyway ) like what SCEA and SCEE do.
Japan Studio is probably Sony's most prolific studio this gen. While they may have only worked on two fully fledged ps3 titles so far (Siren and the Last Guardian), they've worked on a mountain of PSP titles (<3 Patapon), and have worked with numerous third parties on other PSP/PS3 projects (Demon's Souls <3, White Knight 1/2, Jeanne D'Arc, PlayStation CAMP stuff, etc. etc.). Only Sony Santa Monica comes close, with their involvement in just about every PSN title to come out of SCEA.
The issue is with SCEJ as a whole. The only have Japan Studio and Polyphony Digital, both of which were formed in the 90s, and they seem to have little interest in expanding their current operations, instead choosing to rely on third party support like they have for the previous two generations. And it's something they can get away, given the ps3's position in Japan. Even mutiplatform ps3/360 games are essentially exclusive in terms of how they effect the console's performance in the region.
I can understand the reasoning "we have a bunch of exclusives already, so why bother making our own", but SCEA and SCEE could've easily used this reasoning prior to 2006, yet they didn't. As a result we're getting games from Zipper Interactive, Guerrilla Games, Evolution Studios, and Media Molecule, all of which first signed deals with SCE during the ps2 generation when PlayStation was at the height of its success.
Granted, SCEJ still does a fairly decent job at working with third party studios on exclusive content, but most of these projects seem fairly short-sighted. When SCEA/SCEE work with a new third party, they're generally interested in forming a long term relationship with that studio. If things go well, it often leads to acquisition (GG, MM, ES, ZI), and if things don't work out, they part ways (Ninja Theory). SCEJ seems to contract a game here and there, with little interest in looking past that immediate project. The only time they've formed a meaningful relationship with a studio is Level 5, and that doesn't seem to have been handled very well in the long run.
They need to either form a new studio in another city in Japan (changing Japan Studio to Tokyo Studio or something), or else work with more third parties in the interest of forming long term exclusive relationships. Newer studios like Platinum Games have been huge missed opportunities for Sony, imo.