In a new interview with the Japanese publication AV Watch, the former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida revealed that Sucker Punch's 2020 action-adventure Ghost of Tsushima marked a sizeable achievement for Sony's Japanese localization team.
Remarkably, according to Yoshida, it marked the first foreign first-party PlayStation game to sell over 1,000,000 copies in 22 years, with only the PS1 title Crash Bandicoot 3 having previously hit the incredible milestone when it was first released in 1998 in the country (h/t: @Genki_JPN).
Yoshida revealed the titbit in a section of the interview where he opened up about the Japanese sales of Sony's first-party output during his time at the company and reminisced about his experiences of developing games in the US from 2000 to 2008.
Talking about this period, Yoshida reflected on the success of games like God of War (2005) and Uncharted (2007), which were huge hits almost everywhere else in the world but struggled to break Japan. He even apparently at one point tried the reassure the company's Japanese localization team, stating though "it's hard right now" their time would eventually come in the future.
Elsewhere, in this section, he then went on to explain that this time may finally be upon us, with the appreciation of overseas games becoming greater in the country — not just for Sony titles, but third parties too. He attributes this to a few different factors, including the emergence of the Internet and the aversion to cultural differences gradually decreasing and organizations like CERO weakening their regulations on overseas games, allowing companies to release the same content in Japan as they did in the West.
The full interview is available here, but be warned, it is in Japanese (so your mileage may vary)