With big titles such as Nioh, NieR: Automata, Persona 5, Final Fantasy XV this past year, we’ve already seen plenty of Japanese titles for the current generation, but it looks like we’ll be seeing more soon, according to Sony Interactive Entertainment America boss Shawn Layden, who recently spoke to Time about the future of PlayStation.
Here’s what Shawn Layden had to say about Japanese publishers making a comeback with the big titles we’ve seen this past year:
“That’s super important for us. I think a lot of Japanese developers lost their way chasing the mobile games yen, if you will, but they’re coming back to console in a major way. And speaking of, we’ll have some big announcements at E3 in that precise vein.”
He also calls the Switch “a great success for Nintendo,” admitting  “it’s definitely what the fanbase has been waiting for.” However, he sees the Nintendo console as more of a complementary traveler than a rival. “When you look at our numbers, I think it shows that a lot of gamers are a two-console family. And quite often those two consoles are PlayStation and Nintendo sitting side-by-side.”
Layden says Sony still views the PS Vita as a viable development platform, but also notes that while new Western releases have slowed down, they’re still being made in Japan:
“To be honest, the Vita just didn’t reach critical mass in the U.S. or Western Europe. I don’t know if it was that it was more technology people had to carry around, or more things to charge, or whether their phone or tablet were taking care of that. But once the content slowed in that pipeline, it became hard to keep the Vita as a going concern.”
E3 2017 runs from June 13-15, 2017.
