Astro’s Playroom dev’s next game will be its ‘biggest to date’

Astro’s Playroom developer Team Asobi has claimed that its next game will be its “biggest to date”.

In a new interview with GamesIndustry.Biz, Team Asobi creative and studio director Nicolas Doucet briefly spoke about the future of the studio and its growing team.

“We have a current production, and that’s going fine,” Doucet said. “But we want to have another group for R&D, and we want enough in this group to explore as many areas that are interesting. And to potentially start other projects.”

Doucet also discussed the studio R&D team, which takes a rotating cast of development staff and allows them to incubate ideas, and experiment with new technology for potential inclusion in future games.

“We always have this extra team on the side,” Doucet told GI. “Probably like 90% of the studio is on production, but there is this small pocket of people in the background that are already touching the technologies of tomorrow, or trying things with the technologies we have today, but taking them into a new direction.

“In order to keep this freshness, this R&D team needs to be rotated quite often. People go into production, and then after that maybe go into R&D for some time.”

VGC reported last year that the studio was working on a new 3D action game.

A Team Asobi job listing on LinkedIn showed the studio was looking for a game designer who will specialise in making “a variety of levels for a 3D action game”.

Nicolas Doucet had previously said he would consider a sequel to Astro’s Playroom, but that there were no plans at that point and much would depend on the popularity of the game.

In VGC’s review of Astro’s Playroom, we said: “Astro’s Playroom is both DualSense’s killer app and an unmissable, imaginative tribute to PlayStation’s history. Games have never felt this satisfying.”

Further reading

Review: Astro’s Playroom is an unmissable tribute to PlayStation’s history

The PS5 pack-in is both an impressive DualSense showcase and a wonderful trip through Sony's past

VGC sources revealed last February that Sony was planning to wind down its Japan Studio, with the majority of its development staff being let go and the remaining staff being absorbed into Team Asobi.

Sony later confirmed this in a statement, saying: “In an effort to further strengthen business operations, SIE can confirm PlayStation Studios Japan Studio will be re-organized into a new organization on April 1.

“Japan Studio will be re-centred to Team ASOBI, the creative team behind Astro’s Playroom, allowing the team to focus on a single vision and build on the popularity of Astro’s Playroom.”