Following his exit from Sony, Shuhei Yoshida has openly discussed his time at the company and what his strategy would be for making more live service games. Back in November, PlayStation veteran Shuhei Yoshida announced he would be retiring from Sony after more than 30 years at the company.
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January 15 was his last day and while it’s unclear whether he intends to take up a new role elsewhere in the industry, like fellow former Sony executive Shawn Layden, or leave gaming entirely, he’s already opened up about his time at Sony in a new interview.
He covers a broad range of topics, but most interesting is his comments about Sony’s push for more live service games and how, if it was up to him, it wouldn’t have happened. As a reminder, Yoshida was originally in charge of what is currently known as PlayStation Studios, the division responsible for first party game development. He stepped down in 2019, to head up an indie initiative, and was replaced by Herman Hulst.
Speaking with Kinda Funny Games on its latest podcast (from the 1:11:28 mark), Yoshida explains it was his job to manage the budget and allocate money into what games would get made: ‘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.’.
