In an interview shortly after his departure from Sony last month, former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has revealed why he was moved to working with indie studios from originally working with first-party PlayStation studios. Speaking with VentureBeat, Yoshida revealed that he “had no choice” in the matter, and that it was between the new role and leaving PlayStation.
He does also mention, however, that it was a role he took because he felt strongly about PlayStation as a company and its status in the console market.
“Moving from first-party to indies? Well, I had no choice,” said Yoshida. “When Jim 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 also noted that moving from working with first-party developers to indie developers felt like a bigger change in his life than leaving the company altogether since January. He also spoke about his work with indie developers, becoming an advisor of sorts to smaller studios.
“That was the bigger change for me personally – moving from first-party to indies – than leaving the company this year,” explained Yoshida. “I’m very lucky that the indie community, the publishers and developers I work closely with, they believed that they could use my help.”
“I became an advisor for some of these companies. I’m continuing to work with some of the indie publishers and developers I respect. The transition out of Sony to becoming an independent advisor is less of a change than moving out of first-party.”
Ultimately, Yoshida took on his role in a way where he would improve relationships between Sony and its independent development partners to such an extent that his role would no longer be necessary. His decision to leave was marked by a number of factors, including the fact that former PlayStation boss Jim Ryan was also leaving the company.
“My personal goal, when I started the indie job, was to make my position obsolete,” said Yoshida. “The company would be doing so well that there was no need for someone like me to tell everyone that this was important. I feel like we’ve achieved that pretty well.”
“There’s still a lot we can do, but people are working on it. You had the combination of Jim leaving and Nishino and Hermen stepping up, and I felt good about the state of our support for indies. I decided to leave.”
Yoshida is currently working as an independent advisor for game developers. He had spoken about his time with PlayStation back when his departure from the company was first announced. January 15, 2025 marked the end of his 31 years-long tenure with the company.
He had previously also spoken about Sony’s focus on live-service games, and how he was trying to push back against the initiative at the time, since he believed that PlayStation would be better served with more single-player titles. He also spoke about the risk with the release of Helldivers 2, and its eventual success.
