Former PlayStation CEO “If it were me, I wouldn’t make a live service game” – Game News

Former company CEO PlayStationShuhei Yoshida, said he would oppose Sony’s entry into the live service gaming sector if he were still in charge of the platform holding company.

The famous executive retired from Sony this month, after 31 years at the company, where he helped launch the first PlayStation and served as president of Worldwide Studios from 2008 to 2019.

In his first interview since leaving PlayStation, Shuhei was asked about a variety of topics, including why the PS Vita failed and why Bloodborne Not yet released on PS5.

Yoshida was also asked about his thoughts on Sony’s push into live service games, since he stepped down from his role as head of first-party development to focus on games indie.

The former executive said he will try to resist pushes from Sony management to make more games in lucrative but risky genres and joked that maybe that’s why he was removed as director of Worldwide Studios.

Sony had ambitious plans to release 12 live service games on PS5 by 2026, but canceled half of them after running into serious problems getting started, including canceling one Multiplayer game in the series The Last of Us and stop selling Concord after just two weeks.

Even recently, information was revealed that PlayStation had just canceled two live service game projects from Bend Studio (famous for Days Gone) and Bluepoint Studio (famous for its remakes Demon Souls). It is known that one of these two projects is a game God of War live service version.

The company’s biggest success to date is Helldivers 2since its launch last May, has become PlayStation’s fastest-selling launch game ever.

“For me, I manage this budget, so I’m responsible for allocating money to what types of games to make.”Yoshida explains. “If the company is considering it [đi] in that vein, it probably doesn’t make sense to stop developing the next God of War game or other single-player game and put all the money into live service games.

“However, what they did when I left and Hermen [Hulst] took over as the company gave us more resources. I don’t think they asked Hermen to stop making single player games. [Họ nói] ‘these games are great, keep doing this, and we’ll give you more resources to work on these live service games and testing’.”

He added: “I’m sure they know it’s risky. The chances of a game succeeding in this fiercely competitive genre are slim. However, the company, knowing that risk, gave Hermen the resources and opportunity to experiment. I think that’s how they did it. In my mind, that’s great and hopefully some of the games will be successful.

“Fortunately, Helldivers 2 did very well… no one expected that. So, you cannot predict success in this industry, which is the most exciting part of this profession. I hope that this strategy will eventually work. If I were in Hermen’s position, I probably would have tried to resist that direction. Maybe that’s one of the reasons they kicked me out of first-party game development!”

Yoshida was president of Sony Worldwide Studios for 11 years, during one of the studio’s most memorable and successful periods, when it released titles such as The Last of Us, Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima.

In 2019, he stepped down to take a role at SIE’s “Independent Developer Initiative” department, which aims to nurture smaller independent studios outside. Explaining the decision, Yoshida said that although he was sad to leave the first-party development department, he believed the decision was the right thing for the company, so that a new leader could bring new energy and ideas.

“On one hand, I like what I’m doing. We had a lot of great times in the organization, [và] Lots of great games and IPs to work on”he explained. “I absolutely love working in exclusive game development, and in my mind, I have no interest in working anywhere else in the company other than in game development after many years.

“But when they approached me with the idea of ​​doing something for indie, at that time, the company was criticized for not supporting indie enough. When the PS4 launched, at the time [cựu giám đốc điều hành] Adam Boyes, we promoted indie very well and the industry loved it. I like what Adam’s team is doing…

“I’m also very worried about that trend, and how we are perceived. So when Jim [Ryan, cựu CEO của PlayStation] said, ‘Shu, we’ve been criticized, we’re not doing enough for indie’, I said, ‘yeah, yeah, you should do something about it’, and Jim said, ‘no, I want you do something about this!’”

Yoshida said that despite what it looks like on the outside, he doesn’t see the move to working with independent development teams as a demotion. “I think indie is something I’m interested in and I think I can do something special”he said.

“After 11 years of managing Worldwide Studios, while I enjoy and am proud of what we have achieved, leading the team with the same people for such a long period of time may not be great. Like talking about live service games, people have a way of thinking and looking at games… those are things that I don’t care about and wouldn’t even try.

“Like, I have absolutely no interest in making movies based on our game IP: the movie industry looks down on us and they don’t respect the creative side of video games, and they’ve make very bad movies when they try. So I’m not interested, but after I leave, see all these great movies and TV shows being made.”