Expect "big announcements" from Japanese PS4 devs at E3 2017 next week, after they "lost their way chasing the mobile yen"

Japan is coming back to PS4, babes.

PlayStation wants to bring back the glory years of powerhouse Japanese games development, and PS4 players will begin to benefit from this as early as E3 2017 next week.

Speaking in an interview feature with Time (AKA The Gift That Keeps On Giving), Sony's Shawn Layden said Japanese development fell off for a few years there, but is coming back.

"I think a lot of Japanese developers lost their way chasing the mobile games yen, if you will, but they’re coming back to console in a major way," he said.

"And speaking of, we’ll have some big announcements at E3 in that precise vein.”

Just to get even more specific, Layden listed of a sample of big, recent releases as examples of Japanese development making a comeback - Resident Evil 7, Nioh, Nier: Automata, Persona 5 and Final Fantasy 15.

“That’s super important for us," he said.

If that's the calibre and scope of announcements we can expect for PS4 at E3 2017, it's important to us too. We thought we knew what Sony is bringing PS4 fans at E3 2017, but perhaps the platform holder is going to surprise us in a big way. You won't hear us complaining if it does. Tune in to Sony's E3 2017 conference on June 12 to find out.

This all comes from the same interview where Sony said PlayStation leads Xbox 3-1 in Europe, gave PS Pro and PSVR sales figures, and pooh-poohed backwards compatibility.

As for Sony's other hardware, judgsing by this feature it doesn't look like there's much hope for big Vita announces this year, if anybody was expecting that. Layden said the Vita just never took off in the west, for a variety of reasons, and that Sony couldn't keep up a pipeline of content once that became obvious.

Japanese developers continue to support the portable, though, and it's doing fine in Asia - so if you can read Japanese and access the Japanese PlayStation Store, you're laughing there.