Shuhei Yoshida Says He Would’ve Resisted the Push Towards Live Service Games

by
William D’Angelo
, posted 13 hours ago / 1,123 Views

The former President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida in an interview with Kinda Funny revealed he would’ve resisted the push towards live services games.

“For me, I was managing this budget, so I was responsible for allocating money to what kinds of games to make,” said Yoshida (via VideoGamesChronicle). “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 stepped down as President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios in 2019 and became the PlayStation Head of Independent Developer Initiative. He left PlayStation this month.

He went on to explain his decision to leave PlayStation after over 30 years at the company.

“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 said. “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 indies,’ I said, ‘yeah, yeah, you should do something about it,’ and Jim said, ‘no, I want you to do something about it!'”

He added, “I thought it was something I cared about, and I thought I could uniquely do something about. 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.”

A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Entertainment More Articles