Team ASOBI

Team ASOBI is a first-party game development studio within Sony Interactive Entertainment’s PlayStation Studios organization. Established in 2012 as an experimental internal team within Japan Studio, it was formed by game designer Nicolas Doucet to explore interaction ideas shaped by PlayStation hardware.

The studio’s early work included The PlayRoom, a PlayStation 4 augmented-reality title designed around the DualShock 4 controller and PlayStation Camera, followed by The PlayRoom VR for PlayStation VR. Its robot character, A5081, became the foundation for Astro, the character at the centre of the studio’s later games.

In 2018, Team ASOBI released the virtual-reality platformer ASTRO BOT: Rescue Mission. It followed with ASTRO’s PLAYROOM, a PlayStation 5 title pre-installed to demonstrate the DualSense wireless controller’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers while celebrating PlayStation history. In April 2021, following the restructuring of Japan Studio, Team ASOBI was reconstituted as a standalone first-party studio within PlayStation Studios.

Development focus

The studio develops family-friendly, character-driven interactive entertainment with an emphasis on playful 3D platforming and hardware-centred game design. Its capabilities include:

• Full-cycle game development and design
• 3D environments, character modelling and animation
• Gameplay and systems programming
• Audio engineering and implementation
• Prototyping interaction mechanics for PlayStation hardware
• Virtual-reality mechanics and spatial audio

Team ASOBI released Astro Bot for PlayStation 5 in September 2024, continuing the Astro series with a new platforming adventure. The studio’s work is closely associated with designing games that make distinctive use of PlayStation controllers, console features and virtual-reality technology.