Former Sony president wants the PS5 to rival Xbox in adoption of indie games

Former SIE Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has outlined how the PS5 can become the premiere place for smaller game developers in the industry.

As the PS5 enters its third year of market availability, it’s been an ongoing saga for the now Head of Independent Developer Initiative at Sony. Speaking to Gamesindustry.biz (opens in new tab), Yoshida has doubled down on plans for Sony’s latest home console to bring in as many creators as possible to the system. 

In the interview, he said: “We are working hard to improve our systems and tools and sharing information to better promote games and we try to create new ways to showcase these quality games to PlayStation users”. 

There has been no shortage of support for independent developers on the PS5 as the PlayStation Indies (opens in new tab) initiative has been thriving since its launch in July 2020. This push, spearheaded by Shuhei Yoshida himself since stepping down as president, has now blossomed into a platform to discover all the upcoming games from smaller teams as the answer to the AAA focus of some of the best PS5 games on the market.

There has been some stigma around the difficulty of developing games for the PS5 which has persisted since even before the launch of PS5 (via T3 (opens in new tab)). It’s something that Yoshida wants to tackle head-on to let developers know that’s not the case: “We’re trying to change the perceptions of the challenge of developing and publishing games on PlayStation. It’s a communication challenge we’ve been working on.”

Play has no limits 

It’s certainly encouraging that PlayStation is so committed to making the PS5 an exciting and accommodating place for indie devs. 

As someone who plays her fair share of smaller titles alongside the blockbuster titles on PS5, this news is all the more welcome to me. I love everything from Ghost of Tsushima to God of War Ragnarok, but I’d be just as keen to boot up a smaller title that might be more willing to get creative with the PS5. 

If State of Play events can have more of a focus on independent productions, and PS Plus can keep giving us excellent lesser-known titles, then we may well see a renaissance for indie titles on PS5. 

It remains to be seen what further actions Yoshida will take in his current role, but everything said and done so far paints an encouraging portrait of things to come.

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