How a gaijin studio made the beautiful unrealism of Ghost of Tsushima

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
August 9, 2020
Updated June 19, 2025
16 min

From the Japanese point of view, there is no way around it. Sucker Punch Productions, the maker of the Ghost of Tsushima samurai epic, is a gaijin studio. Gaijin is the Japanese word for foreigners, and it’s usually not a kind word.

But in the case of Tsushima, there has been almost universal praise for the beautiful art and respect for history and Japanese culture in Sony’s last major exclusive for the PlayStation 4 game console. It debuted July 17, and people bought more than 2.4 million copies in its first three days of sales. And Japanese reviewers loved the game, which roughly depicts the Mongol invasion of Japan in 1274.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.