‘I had no choice’: Shuhei Yoshida says he had to take PlayStation’s indie role or leave – Video Games Chronicle
The former Sony Interactive president says his decision to focus on smaller titles was made for himFormer PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida claims he was made to lead PlayStation’s new indie initiative, because he would have had to “leave the company” if he hadn’t.The popular executive quit Sony last month, after 31 years at the company, where he helped launch the original PlayStation, and served as its president of SIE Worldwide Studios between 2008 and 2019.In 2019 it was announced that Yoshida had stepped down to work on a new initiative focusing on building relationships with indie developers, with Hermen Hulst replacing him as president.In a new interview, Yoshida says he essentially “had no choice” but to take the new indies role, because the alternative would have been leaving PlayStation altogether.Yoshida explained that while he enjoyed his time working with indie developers and will continue to do so now that he has actually left Sony, it was a role that was essentially forced on him, but one he took regardless because of his love for indie games.“Moving from first-party to indies? Well, I had no choice,” Yoshida explained to VentureBeat. “When Jim asked me to do the indie job, the choice was to do that or leave the company. But I felt very strongly about the state of PlayStation and indies. I really wanted to do this. I believed I could do something unique for that purpose.“That was the bigger change for me personally – moving from first-party to indies – than leaving the company this year. I’m very lucky that the indie community, the publishers and developers I work closely with, they believed that they could use my help.“I became an advisor for some of these companies. I’m continuing to work with some of the indie publishers and developers I respect. The transition out of Sony to becoming an independent advisor is less of a change than moving out of first-party.”Yoshida left Sony in January, marking the end of a three-decade-long career with the platform holder. When asked by VentureBeat why he had retired, Yoshida noted that he hadn’t actually decided to retire, just to leave Sony. He also noted that his aim was to improve Sony’s relationship with indies to the extent that he would no longer be needed.“My personal goal, when I started the indie job, was to make my position obsolete,” he explained. “The company would be doing so well that there was no need for someone like me to tell everyone that this was important. I feel like we’ve achieved that pretty well.“There’s still a lot we can do, but people are working on it. You had the combination of Jim leaving and Nishino and Hermen stepping up, and I felt good about the state of our support for indies. I decided to leave.”Yoshida joked last month that he had been removed as SIE Worldwide Studios boss because he would have resisted the company’s push into live service games.Speaking to Kinda Funny, he said: “Luckily, Helldivers 2 did so well… nobody expected that. So you can’t plan a success in this industry, that’s the most fun part of this business. I hope that this strategy will work in the end. If I was in Hermen’s position, I probably would have tried to resist that direction. Maybe that’s one of the reasons they removed me from first-party!”We sometimes publish affiliate links on VGC. For more information read our affiliate linking policy.@JordanMiddlerJordan is a games journalist from Scotland, formerly of the BBC.Join the conversation!Already a patron? Click the button below to log in with Patreon. Not a member yet? Visit our Patreon page to become a patron and get access to community discussions and other exclusive benefits.Jim Ryan’s legacy getting worse every day.That’s sad. Shuhei Yoshida was the best Sony ever had to offer. Unlike the rest of PlayStation’s leadership, he actually worked on games. Yet, Jim Ryan made bank with Sony despite his mismanagement. Never before Sony had so many studio closures & cancellations.All those cancellations had to cost into the hundreds of millions, not including Concordsony should be crawling back on shattered glass to beg this man to come back and gracefully replace live service hulst.Jim Ryan send to be the master, and Hulst the appreciative in the live service arena. It seems like neither play gamesI think Sony made a major mistake removing Shu, and going down the live service route. There are only a few live service games that have been successes, like Fortnite and Apex Legends. If the games don’t grab you right away, then you’ll just delete them from your console. It’s a huge risk spending huge sums on a free game that gamers can just throw away like that. They’d be much better off concentrating on some more top class single player and coop games, along with more family friendly titles like Astrobot, and maybe one or two live service multiplayer games.In the full interview, Yoshida was clearly happy to work on indies- that’s a huge passion for him and he got to be a division of one, showing the sort of pull he had. People assume that SIE wouldn’t go into live service if he’d stayed in charge of first party, but I believe that decision was made by executives at the top of Sony. That top-down decision was clearly a mistake, and now that the numbers back it, they’ve been canceling various live service projects.Jack Tretton, Andy House, Shawn Layden and now Shuhei Yoshida have been huge loses to Sony.Hearing Shawn Layden talk more and more makes you realize he shouldn’t be working in games. Even when not working for PlayStation, he’s just a corporate stoogeWhen Jim asked me to do the indie job, the choice was to do that or leave the company.Kudos to him for saying it exactly how it happened.He was railroaded in order to make way for a western pro-DEI hire. I hope Sony is learning its lesson.It really is a shame to see how much damage Jim Ryan did to the Playstation brand.Yoshida also said that the PS3 almost ended Playstation, losing a billion dollars. Luckily, Playstation was subsidized by the profitable Sony TV group”I was very concerned. PS3 was another hard time. At the time I was part of management, so I could see the financials. We were losing a billion dollars. I thought PlayStation was finished.”Even for a company as big as Sony, a billion dollars back in the mid-2000s was a hefty chunk of change. “But luckily, at that time Sony’s flatscreen TVs were hugely popular,” Yoshida says. “The TV group was making enough money to cover the losses from the PS3 and we were able to survive. But that was the most difficult time.”Another tough time for the PS3 was the PSN outage, Yoshida notes. “It lasted months,” Yoshida remembers. “It’s unbelievable how hard that was internally.””Our graphics hardware was less powerful than the Xbox 360 as well, the Nvidia chip. Mark Cerny and the Naughty Dog engineers would use the Cell processor, which was powerful but hard to use, to help render the graphics. Part of the CPU would do the GPU’s job. That became our internal game engine.”That’s sad. Shuhei Yoshida was the best Sony ever had to offer. Unlike the rest of PlayStation’s leadership, he actually worked on games. Yet, Jim Ryan made bank with Sony despite his mismanagement. Never before Sony had so many studio closures & cancellations.© 1981 Media Ltd. All Rights Reserved.No part of this site or its content may be reproduced without the permission of the copyright holder.Website by 44 Bytes
