Former PlayStation boss says he ‘would’ve resisted live service push’

Former PlayStation studios boss Shuhei Yoshida has said he would’ve resisted Sony’s push into live service games, was he still in charge at the platform holder.

The popular executive quit Sony this month, after 31 years at the company, where he helped launch the original PlayStation, and served as its president of Worldwide Studios between 2008 and 2019.

Speaking in his first interview since leaving PlayStation, Shuhei was quizzed on a range of topics by Kinda Funny, including why the PS Vita failed, and the reason behind Bloodborne not yet coming to PS5.

Yoshida was also asked for his thoughts on Sony’s push into live service games since he relinquished his role as the head of its first-party development to focus on indie games. The former exec said he would’ve attempted to resist pushes from Sony management to create more games within the lucrative, but risky, genre space, and joked that perhaps that’s why he was removed as Worldwide Studios boss.

Sony had ambitious plans to release 12 live service games on PS5 by 2026, but canceled half of them after it experienced significant teething problems, including canceling a Last of Us multiplayer game and pulling Concord from sale after just two weeks. Its biggest success, by far, is Helldivers 2, which since launching in May last year, has become PlayStation’s fastest-selling game launch ever.

“For me, I was managing this budget, so I was responsible for allocating money to what kinds of games to make,” Yoshida explained. “If the company was considering [going] that way, it probably didn’t make sense to stop making another God of War or single-player game, and put all the money into the live service games.

“However, what they did when I left and Hermen [Hulst] took over is the company gave us a lot more resources. I don’t think they told Hermen to stop making single-player games. [They said] ‘these games are great, keep doing that, and we’ll give you additional resources to work on these live service games and try it’.”

He added: “I’m sure they knew it was risky. The chance of a game becoming successful in this hugely competitive genre would be small. However, the company, knowing that risk, gave Hermen the resources and chance to try it. I think that’s the way they did it. In my mind, that’s great, and hopefully some games will become successful.

“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 the Hermen’s position, probably I would’ve tried to resist that direction. Maybe that’s one of the reasons they removed me from the first-party!”

Yoshida was president of Sony Worldwide Studios for 11 years, covering one of its most memorable and successful periods, during which it released the likes of The Last of Us, Horizon, and Ghost of Tsushima.

In 2019, he stepped down from to take a role at SIE’s Independent Developer Initiative, to nurture external, smaller independent studios. Explaining the decision, Yoshida said that although he was sad to step away from first-party development, he believed the decision was the right thing for the company, so that a new leader could bring renewed energy and ideas.

“On one hand, I was enjoying what I was doing. We had so many great times within the organization, [and] so many great games and IPs to work on,” he explained. “I totally enjoyed working on first-party game development and in my mind, I didn’t have any interest to work elsewhere in the company other than game development after so many years.

“But when they offered me this idea to do something on indies, at that time, the company was criticized for not supporting indies enough. At the launch of PS4, in the [former executive] Adam Boyes days, we were promoting indies so well and the industry loved it. I loved what Adam’s team was doing…

“I was very worried about that trend as well, and how we were being seen. So when Jim [Ryan, former PlayStation CEO] said, ‘Shu, we’ve been criticized, we’re not doing enough for inides’, I said, ‘yeah, yeah, you should do something about it’, and Jim said, ‘no, I want you to do something about it!’”

Yoshida said that, despite how it looked externally, he did not view the move to indies as a demotion. “I thought it was something I cared about, and I thought I could uniquely do something about,” he said.

“After 11 years managing Worldwide Studios, even though I enjoyed it and was proud of what we accomplished, leading the group with the same person for such a long time might not be a great thing. Like talking about live service games, people who have one way of thinking and looking at games… some things I’m not interested in and wouldn’t even try.

“Like, I was totally not interested in movies being made based on our game IP: the film industry looked down on us and they didn’t respect the creative aspect of video games, and they made very bad movies when they tried. So I had no interest, but after I left, look at all these great movies and TV shows being made.”