MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Astro Bot director, Nicolas Doucet, has been appointed PlayStation Japan’s studio head.
The announcement – which came via a brief update on the megacorp’s website (thanks, Siliconera) – did not comment on the next steps of Doucet’s predecessor, Allan Becker.
Doucet has been with the company for years and has directed a number of notable titles, including several well-received VR games. The studio’s most offerings titles include Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, Knack and its sequel Knack 2, The Playroom, and The Playroom VR.
It’s the latest in a number of changes in Sony’s senior ranks, including the recent departure of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Worldwide Studios former chairman, Shawn Layden and PlayStation’s head of global second-party games, Gio Corsi.
Guerrilla’s Hermen Hulst was recently appointed Sony’s new head of worldwide studios (WWS). In a press release, Sony said Hulst’s promotion was “effective immediately” and sees him “manage and lead all game development across the 14 studios that form Worldwide Studios”.
Consequently, Sony also confirmed former president WWS, Shuhei Yoshida, will leave his position to head up a “newly formed initiative that will focus on nurturing external independent creators”. This new initiative will focus on “celebrating external developers that are creating new and unexpected experiences for the gaming community”, and sees Yoshida report directly to CEO Jim Ryan.
We’ve also seen the recent departure of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Worldwide Studios former chairman, Shawn Layden and PlayStation’s head of global second-party games, Gio Corsi. Sony did not elaborate on why or when Layden was departing the company, and to date, Layden has not acknowledged the move on any of his public-facing social media channels. PlayStation, however, announced the news on its official PlayStation twitter account.
Sony recently revealed its current-gen system, PlayStation 4, has now shipped 102.8 million units, eclipsing both the original PlayStation and Nintendo Wii and making it the second-highest selling home console of all time, second only to the PlayStation 2 which boasts 155m lifetime sales. By comparison, it’s estimated that Microsoft’s Xbox One has sold around 41m consoles, although the company has chosen not to formally confirm hardware sales of its current-gen system.
As for software? A recent update from the company shows the sell-through for software titles sits at 1,181 million as of January 31st, 2020.
