Team Asobi revealed a new logo through its first official post on PlayStation.Blog as a new internal studio under PlayStation Studios. The team behind the Astro Bot series also set up a new account on Twitter and Instagram.
In the new blog post, the studio director and creative director Nicolas Doucet revealed that the Tokyo-based team is comprised of members from multiple nations. Although the majority of them are Japanese, the studio also has members coming from Korea, Colombia, and several European countries.
Team Asobi, named after the Japanese word for “Play,” was first established as a division under SIE’s Japan Studio in 2012. Its first title is The Playroom, a game pre-installed on PlayStation 4 that also acted as a technology demonstrator for the PlayStation Camera.
The team then released a VR version of The Playroom in 2016. It also released Astro Bot: Rescue Mission in 2018 as a standalone VR game based on the “Robot Rescue” minigame from The Playroom VR.
In late February 2021, SIE announced a reorganization of Japan Studio. At the beginning of the new fiscal year, on April 1, 2021, SIE rearranged the Japanese studio to focus on Team Asobi. Nicolas Doucet was promoted as the head of Japan Studio in early February 2021 as a precursor to this shift.
The latest title from Team Asobi, Astro’s Playroom, is immediately available pre-installed on PlayStation 5.
