Silent Hill Creator Departs Sony to Start Bokeh Game Studio

Several high-profile Japanese developers are breaking out to create their own project. Bokeh Game Studio is a new development house from some of the creators behind Silent Hill, Siren, Gravity Rush, and The Last Guardian, and they've already teased a look at what's next.

The three founders of Bokeh are Junya Okura, Keiichiro Toyama, and Kazunobu Sato. They're all veteran developers who have worked together at Sony studios, and now, they will serve leadership roles at this new independent studio.

Several pieces of concept art were shown in the trailer as well, presumably of whatever their debut project will be. From creature design alone, this definitely seems to be more on the Silent Hill side of things, which is pretty exciting. The future of Silent Hill has been in question for some time, and we could use some good horror games these days.

"It is hard, there are responsibilities, but we have our freedom," Okura says in the video. "This is the most important. I want to enjoy creating from now on."

Hopefully we'll know more soon, but from the leadership's past game development histories alone, Bokeh Game Studio looks promising. As an aside, I also really dig the name; "bokeh" is a photography term used to describe the quality of the unfocused parts of an image. It's a neat word that you can now use to impress your friends and family.

As for what this means for the future of other series at SIE Japan Studio and other places of work, that's up in the air. In 2017, Toyama said the future of Gravity Rush was "still a blank slate." Hopefully the start of something new doesn't preclude more adventures for the series' gravity-bending protagonist.