‘I had no choice’: Shuhei Yoshida says he had to take PlayStation’s indie role or leave
The former Sony Interactive president says his decision to focus on smaller titles was made for him
Former 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.
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“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!”
