After 31 years, PlayStation icon Shuhei Yoshida is retiring from Sony Entertainment Interactive. The account-executive-turned-SIE-president–who stepped down from his former position back in 2019 in order to helm the company’s Independent Developer Initiative–revealed the news via an interview shared on the official PlayStation Blog. Yoshida’s last day with the company will be January 15, 2025.
“I’ve been with PlayStation from the beginning,” Yoshida told Sony senior communications director Sid Shuman. “When I hit 30 years, I was thinking, ‘Hmm, it may be about time for me to move on.’ You know, the company’s been doing great. I love PS5, I love the games that are coming out on this platform. And we have new generations of management who I respect and admire. And I’m so excited for the future of PlayStation. So you know, PlayStation is in really good hands. I thought, ‘Okay, this is my time.'”
Yoshida joined Sony in 1993 as lead account executive and one of the key members of its PlayStation project. According to Yoshida, he was also the first “non-technical” person aboard the team, and thus played a vital part in bringing the original PlayStation to market. He further elaborated on this in the blog post, stating that his role was largely reaching out to publishers and developers in Japan in hopes of them bringing their games to the PlayStation ecosystem.
“That was a really fun time, but also a really challenging time,” Yoshida said. “Not many people in the industry believed in 3D graphics technology.”
Yoshida has since held a number of roles throughout the company, with his most notable being SIE worldwide president. He held the position from May 2008 to November 2019.
Yet regardless of which role he held, Yoshida has always been a prominent figure in the development of several high-profile PlayStation titles. These include Gran Turismo, God of War, The Last of Us, Journey, InFamous, Ape Escape, The Legend of Dragoon, and more. Yoshida says that while he felt “fortunate” to work on “so many great games,” Journey–and its big win at DICE’s Game of the Year Awards–will always be particularly memorable to him.
“Journey was distributed through PlayStation Network. It was a digital-only, small game. You can finish playing the game within like three hours,” Yoshida said. “But that game…[won] Game of the Year against all these AAA titles.
“The creator Jenova Chen did a talk at the summit, and he talked about a letter he received from a girl who lost her father and she thought about her father and she was able to move on in her life. The whole audience stood up and the whole room was filled with happiness and an amazing feeling that this small game could have such a big impact on people’s lives.”
Yoshida will remain with Sony until January 15, 2025, after which he will enjoy a well-earned retirement. However, this will likely not be the last we see of him, as he has already indicated that he intends to remain involved in the gaming industry.