Teruyuki Toriyama announced via a tweet that he will be leaving Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan at the end of December 2020. He went on to say that he will continue to “take on the challenge of creating new game IPs” at his new company. He also asked for his follower’s continued support.
Toriyama is known for his work as a producer, recently working on games like Astro’s Playroom and the Demon’s Souls remake for the PlayStation 5. The former is free software included with every PlayStation 5 that showcases some of the hardware’s features. The latter is a mostly faithful remake of a PlayStation 3 title, albeit with some additions of its own. He also served as producer on Bloodborne, which was created by the original Demon’s Souls developer, FromSoftware.
Toriyama’s departure follows in the wake of some other notable figures leaving Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan. Gravity Rush and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama left the studio at the end of September 2020 to work at Bokeh Game Studio, which he founded. He was joined by the Last Guardian producer, Kazunobu Sato, and Junya Okura, who was a designer for the Gravity Rush series.
Beyond stating that he will continue to work in video games, Toriyama has not yet announced his immediate plans.