If you’re one of the world’s 60 million PlayStation 5 owners, you’re almost certainly familiar with Astro Bot.
The cute mascot character appeared in 2020’s Astro’s Playroom, a short, three-hour adventure pre-installed on every machine.
It was designed to act as a tech demo for the hardware and its advanced controller, but people loved it.
“And it did highlight perhaps the fact that people are craving for these kind of games,” says Nicolas.
Releasing a 3D platformer in 2024 is, on paper, a daunting prospect. Nicolas admits the genre – a staple of the PlayStation 2 era – isn’t very common these days.
And, he says: “The ones that do exist are very, very high quality from people who’ve been making them for years and years.”
It’s also a genre Sony has moved away from recently, and its biggest releases have been more adult, cinematic titles such as God of War and The Last of Us.
Nicolas thinks this is a sign of audiences, and the developers making games for them, maturing.
But he admits that left a gap which Team Asobi – a relatively young studio – was eager to fill.
“I think there needs to be more games that are there just to relax, have a little bit of fun, that are not dramatic, that are not necessarily heavily story driven, where you can just mess around with a game and it’s fun,” says Nicolas.
“But, of course, it needs to be executed well.”