Garteam
Smash Master
Extremely sad, but not surprising. Sony of America is calling the shots now and they don't view Japan as an exceptional market in any way. I mean, they switched the X and O buttons' functions in Japan to match the West for the PS5, an entrenched cultural staple that made the Playstation far more intuitive to Japanese audiences was just thrown out because it was too much work for too little payoff. If they can't even do that, there really is no reason they would fund in-house Japanese game development.Sony is winding down original game development at its oldest first-party developer, Japan Studio, multiple sources have told VGC.
— VGC (@VGC_News) February 25, 2021
➡️ https://t.co/PCL3YtKLAY pic.twitter.com/pa7uAsv4LS
Does this mean no Gravity Rush in Smash? I mean, this sucks either way, but I would've preferred one of these games over Generic Realistic Character #4853.
Hell, even their standards for what is and not acceptable in a video game are seemingly affected by this. They won't even let Demon Slayer show a character losing an arm or have anime games show off their... assets for breaking their policies on violent and sexual content respectively, but The Last of Us 2 can have a character club another to death in graphic detail and the most sterile sex scene since The Room. The West is given much more wiggle room because they're the more important market for the near future.
It's frustrating, but there's not much that can be done.