When Shuhei Yoshida stepped down as president of SIE Worldwide Studios to lead indie games in 2019, it wasn’t something he outright chose to do. In fact, Yoshida only had two options: go lead a the new initiative with indies or leave PlayStation altogether.
In a new interview with VentureBeat, Yoshida said that despite only having the one option, it was something he was still excited to do.
“Moving from first-party to indies? Well, I had no choice,” Yoshida said. “When Jim [Ryan] 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.”
Yoshida said that moving from first-party games to indies was a bigger challenge for him than ultimately leaving the company this year after 31 years. He said that he feels lucky that the indie community felt like he could help their growth on PlayStation.
“I became an adviser for some of these companies,” he said. “I’m continuing to work with some of the indie publishers and developers I respect. The transition out of Sony to becoming an independent adviser is less of a change than moving out of first-party.”
Following up on that statement, Yoshida said that will continue to work with indies despite no longer being with PlayStation. He says that he loves working with younger, talented developers who “come up with amazing games every year.”
“Every year when you come to one of these events, a couple of the nominees for game of the year are indies,” he said. “They’re bringing something exciting to the industry. It’s a lot of fun. That’s my dream job, to be able to help them.”
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PlayStation as a whole sucks because of him, Ryan, Hulst. The era is done.