Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida has said he took the job overseeing indie games for PlayStation because he “had no choice” – and now they’re selling better than ever on the console.
In an interview with Venturebeat, Yoshida discussed his 30+ year career at PlayStation, including his move in 2019 from president of SIE Worldwide Studios to overseeing a new initiative focused on independent developers.
“Well, I had no choice,” said Yoshida about the move. “When Jim [Ryan] asked me to do the indie job, the choice was to do that or leave the company.”
He continued: “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.”
Yoshida explained PlayStation had been criticised by indie developers, that “PlayStation doesn’t care about indies”. That’s now changed, he believes, with indie games on PlayStation selling better than PC in some instances.
“You don’t hear that kind of criticism anymore,” said Yoshida. “Last year we had lots of anecdotes from our indie partners that their new games were selling better on PlayStation than any other platform. Thats amazing. Some games sold better on PlayStation than on PC. When I started that work five years ago, our indie partners would say that when they released their games multiplatform, the Switch version would sell three to five times more than PlayStation. Bit by bit, that gap has narrowed down. We have a strong team inside the company supporting indies.”
Yoshida left PlayStation last month, though clarified in this interview that he hasn’t retired. He “felt good about the state of [PlayStation’s] support for indies” and so decided to leave. As such, he plans to still work with indie developers.
“Oh, yeah. I love working with these younger, talented developers,” said Yoshida. “They come up with amazing games every year. Every year when you come to one of these events, a couple of the nominees for game of the year are indies. They’re bringing something exciting to the industry. It’s a lot of fun. That’s my dream job, to be able to help them.”
Yoshida also addressed current issues in the games industry, in particular why development has slowed down and so many layoffs have occurred.
“I think it’s an overreaction to the Covid situation,” he said. “Companies invested too much, including ourselves. Then we had to face reality and make adjustments. If you take out the Covid years you’d have smoother growth over the years.”
Yoshida discussed his beginnings at Sony, courting companies like Square Enix and Namco to move development to PlayStation, and his own work on games like Crash Bandicoot and Gran Turismo. “Crash Bandicoot was my first product, though,” he said. “Mark Cerny and Naughty Dog taught me a lot. They trained me as a producer.”
A big shift at Sony happened ahead of the PS4. The PS3 was “another hard time”, Yoshida explained – a topic also covered recently on Eurogamer by fellow former PlayStation exec Shawn Layden. “We were losing a billion dollars. I thought PlayStation was finished.”
As such, with development of the PS4, hardware and software teams worked more closely together to ensure the console was easy to develop for and collaboration could occur. That’s how the controller’s Share button was created, for instance.
“Starting with PS4 and PS Vita, that wall broke down,” said Yoshida. “We became part of the hardware design process. We loved that. Lots of things about the hardware came from ideas and feedback from the game team. So we loved the system. We knew what we were getting. We were making prototypes based on the hardware prototypes.”
He added: “But we still didn’t know if it was going to succeed, until Microsoft made some great decisions for us. They put the ball on the tee and let us take our swing. We couldn’t have asked for better competition.”
Since leaving PlayStation, Yoshida has been interviewed a number of times, discussing everything from a new Bloodborne game, to the ill-fated Nintendo PlayStation’s first game.
And beyond helping indie games, he’s starring in one too: Yoshida has voiced a character in the forthcoming Promise Mascot Agency.
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