Sony XDEV Japan working on Stellar Blade

[Gamernyc78]

While a lot of us correctly assumed this before, this is the first official confirmation of it being the case.

It's worth noting that XDEV is not a single entity, but rather a global group encompassing three different studio departments across USA (previously known as San Mateo Studio), United Kingdom and Japan.

XDEV Japan is situated inside of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. (the Japanese branch operating since 1993), and it was originally established in April 2020 as part of the WWS Japan Studio division, before moving on to the current Japanese branch of PlayStation Studios a year later, when it started to expand its production business in other parts of Asia, including South Korea (Stellar Blade) and China (Lost Soul Aside, Convallaria); with all this information corroborated by both Hermen Hulst and several job listings.

*Credit Nial on gaf

 

[ethomaz]

From these 3rd-party titles this one was the most promising imo.
I expect some high 80 meta… maybe 89-90.

 

[Yurinka]

While a lot of us correctly assumed this before, this is the first official confirmation of it being the case.

No, it itsn't the first time.

A while ago Hermen Hulst (or Jim Ryan, not sure) already publicly mentioned that with the Japan Studio restructuring, it got split into Team Asobi for internal development and their Japanese XDEV team for 2nd party Asian games publishing. Both teams got a separate new office inside the same bih SIE Japanese HQ building where Japan Studio was, where both teams will grow.

This Japanese (PS Studio's) XDEV team would now also handle the 2nd party games developed in the rest of Asia, not only the Japanese ones. So as they did before publishing and supporting Death Stranding or Bloodborne, after the restructuring they were going to publish Death Stranding Director's Cut, Death Stranding 2, Physint, Rise of the Ronin, Stellar Blade, Convallaria or Lost Soul Aside.

Like other SIE divisions such as of the marketing one, under the Jim Ryan leadership the SIE external development publishing teams (XDEV) from EU, US and JP would now are part of a coordinated global team with different offices around the world sharing knowledge and resources instead of separate uncoordinated teams competing againt each other.

Regading their US XDEV team, in addition to San Mateo they previously where in Sony Santa Monica, from where they incubated, supported and published many games. Some time after it was branched out from SSM, one of the guys in charge of that there (Nathan Gary) left to became Annapurna Interactive's president.