The Creative Director of one of the besthas been tapped to take over Sony’s first-party Japan Studio🦋.
Nicolas Doucet will be moving from the role of Creative Director and Team Lead to the role of Creative Director for the whole of Japan Studio, Sony’s oldest first-party development studio. Japan Studio is one of the more eclectic development houses arou꧑nd publishing light-hearted, simple games like Ape Escape, Loco Roca and Patapon but also more serious, arty titles like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian.
In the current P🍌S4 era, the studio has tended to make niche games almost fit the Indie game scene than firs🔯t-party development. Games like Everybody’s Golf, which is a Japan Studio game, and God of War by Sony Santa Monicaꦛ don’t really have much in commo❀n. It could be argued that The Last Guardian and the Knack games fit more into the first-party mold, but e💎ven these relatively big games have a bit of an indie twist to them. The Last Guardian is artier than most big first-partyꦡ games usually are and Knack was just sort of too off-kilter to fit in in the first-party s♎pace.
In his career with Sony, Doucet has mostly been involved with games with peripherals, working on the PS2 EyeToy Camera ꦡand more recently on the PSVRಞ. His most recently released game was ASTRO BOT Rescue Mission, which might be the best VR platformer available on any headseඣt.
Choosing a Creative Director with this kind of VR experience is another signal from Sony that VR will remain a key part of their business strategy. One of the few details announced for the upcoming PS5 was tha𒁏t the existing PSVR headsets would be compatible with the new system and a patent that suggests a new headset is in development was also recently discovered.
As part of the 25th Anniversary of the PlayStation launch Doucet recently took part in a survey of Sony first-party developers about asking about their favorite PlayStation games of all times. The French developer chose Metal Gear Solid as his favorite, saying that “with Metal Gear Solid, it felt like games suddenly took a massive leap forward. Halfway between realism and pure fantasy, it’s a game that totally sucked me in with its stealth action.” Honorable mentions also went to PlayStation classics Ridge Racer and Resident Evil.
Source: