Silent Hill: Inventor Leaves Sony; founds his own studio

Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama leaves Sony after 20 years and starts his own studio. A first project has already been teased.

Silent Hill inventor and author Keiichiro Toyama has turned his back on Sony Japan. The industry veteran worked for the PlayStation group since 1999. Titles like Silent Hill, Forbidden Siren or Gravity Rush were developed by him in the lead. Toyama is now turning to new tasks in the game industry.

Together with former colleagues he founded his own development studio Bokeh Game Studios. Toyama announced this via Twitter:

We have newly established a game studio named Bokeh Game Studio. My desire is to keep making games for a long time, so I hope you will continue to support me and our staff! https://t.co/HZNweiWWwd

— Keiichiro Toyama (@K_Toyama) December 3, 2020

Also on board is Kazunobu Sato, former designer of Puppeteer and producer of The Last Guardian. Junya Okura, who joined Toyama at Sony and is also leaving for Bokeh, was also involved in Gravity Rush. It was her wish to have more creative freedom in the new team and to convey to the players that game development was fun.

In the announcement video of the Twitter message, you can take a look at the first concept arts of the new studio. It seems that Toyama and his team are revisiting the horror genre. There is no concrete announcement. But a spiritual successor to the old Silent Hill games would be welcome, after all, Konami’s series has been down since PT and the discontinued Silent Hills.