Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida: We Want and Need Nintendo to Succeed

Historically, there has been a bit of bad blood between Sony and Nintendo (with the latter’s ditching of the former being what caused the creation of the PlayStation in the first place), but in recent years, both of them have grown increasingly more respectful of each other.

This came to a crescendo yesterday: in an interview with IGN‘s Greg Miller, Shuhei Yoshida was asked about Nintendo’s Wii U. Greg Miller took the opportunity to start ragging on the console and its many issues, before Yoshida cut him off, stating that the Wii U was a great console, and that he actually owned two of them (he even has a Miiverse account). “Nintendo makes great family friendly games,” he said, adding that he loved to play the console with his daughter.

Speaking about Nintendo’s larger place in the gaming industry, he said, “I think Nintendo and us are pretty much in the same group,” Yoshida said. “We need Nintendo to be very successful, to help induct as many consumers who like to play games with controllers, right? With sticks and buttons. Because we believe they are great things. We need each other, I think, to create a bigger story.”

This is a lovely and very sporting thing to say, and a far cry from the Sony of the PS3 era that always loved belittling the competition.

Yoshida gets it: the console wars aside, Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft all need each other to achieve anything and to keep each other in check.