Hello and welcome to PlayStation Inside. This article marks the culmination of four and a half years of work on the site. Since December 3, 2020, over fifty people have joined the team, we’ve published three magazines, two documentaries… and now this interview with Shuhei Yoshida, former president of PlayStation (Sony Interactive Entertainment) and a legendary figure of the video games industry in Japan and around the world.
When Shuhei Yoshida agreed to grant us this interview, we found it hard to believe. For a media like ours, which is largely edicated to all things PlayStation, to be able to talk to Shuhei Yoshida for an hour is an incredible and priceless opportunity. It’s also a perfect tribute to the name “PlayStation Inside”. Yes, we’re announcing it here for the very first time: in a few days’ time, PlayStation Inside will be no more, and long live “PSI”! With this shortening of our name, which we’ll explain in due course, we want to usher in a new era while respecting and keeping alive our heritage. And what better way to end the PlayStation Inside adventure than with an interview with one of the most illustrious figures in PlayStation history?
Without further ado, discover our conversation with Shuhei Yoshida. The interview was conducted by Geoffrey Lerch and Yacine Ouali (co-founders of PlayStation Inside), with questions gathered from the entire team. Enjoy it! The interview is also available in French here.
PlayStation Inside (PSI): Hello Shuhei Yoshida! Thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. We’re very honoured to be the first French media outlet you’ve chosen to talk to since your departure from PlayStation. To begin with, we’d like to ask you a general question: what do you think of the current state of the video game industry, and are you optimistic about the future?
Shuhei Yoshida: Hello, and thank you for this interview! Yes, I’m optimistic about the future of video games. We’re living in a time of exceptional technological innovation, and there are more and more great games coming out in recent years, both AAA and indie. It’s very gratifying to see what developers are able to do with the machines at their disposal.
The recent presentation of the Nintendo Switch 2, for example, showed this: with its mix of portable and docked video games, and its technological capabilities approaching those of the latest consoles, the possibilities are vast. I hope, however, that they will continue to focus on creating new experiences, and not lose their identity. I followed the live stream at MinnMax and found, like everyone else, that the Switch 2 was mostly an improved Switch, so the innovation wasn’t totally in that area. Let’s hope they don’t just make their games “better”, but really continue to innovate. In the meantime, the console will also allow you to play several important games like Elden Ring or Hogwarts Legacy, and that’s a good thing.
So I’m very optimistic that we’re heading for years and years of development that will allow us to enjoy some incredible experiences.
PSI: Is there a game on Nintendo Switch 2 that you’re looking forward to trying out?
Shuhei Yoshida: I’m very intrigued by The Duskbloods. I’m curious to see what FromSoftware will do with a Switch exclusive on a technical level, and it’s always interesting to see what they come up with, especially after Elden Ring.
PSI: Speaking of the Switch 2, we’ve seen that Nintendo will be raising the price of its games, just as PlayStation did in 2020. What do you think of this decision, and do you think it will make it easier for other publishers such as Rockstar Games to do the same, or even go further?
Shuhei Yoshida: That’s an interesting question. I think it was going to happen sooner or later, maybe not from Nintendo, but it was going to happen eventually. We live in contrasting times, where inflation is real and significant, but people expect games that are ever more ambitious and therefore expensive to develop to cost the same. It’s an impossible equation.
Everything in video games today is more advanced and more technologically demanding than ever before, and therefore requires more resources. Each publisher or manufacturer sets the price of its games, of course, but in the end the heart of the matter lies in production costs. And that’s why industry actors are so keen to diversify their revenues, in order to continue producing the AAA games that the public buys before anything else. Basically, the proliferation of remasters and remakes doesn’t really stem from any kind of nostalgia or a desire to bring games up to date, but is a kind of “easy” solution to bring in profits that ultimately help finance new games. The same goes for PC ports. I’m not particularly bothered by this, because these ports, remakes and remasters are mostly made by support studios like Nixxes Software, so the studios developing the new games are relieved of the burden.
So I don’t know if Rockstar will jump at the chance to set the price of GTA 6 at 90 euros or more, to speak with your currency, but the situation is this. And we could even add subscription platforms and games as a service, which, while providing huge revenues in their own right, also help to finance AAA down the line.
In any case, a balance must be found between production costs and game prices. GTA6 will obviously be a case in point, but if you take the example of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the game is just as phenomenal visually, despite the fact that the team only has around thirty people. This is one of the ways forward, I think, because you can make excellent games with tighter teams and budgets without compromising quality.
PSI: Speaking of Nintendo, their president Shuntaro Furukawa recently said that generative AI technology can be used creatively, but that video games can’t just be created by technology. What are your thoughts on the use of generative AI in video games, and how do you see the industry in 5 to 10 years’ time with this technology?
Shuhei Yoshida: That’s an interesting and topical question. I believe that generative AI can indeed be used creatively to improve games, but first we need to really know how to use it. The possibilities offered by AI are tools, not ends in themselves. AI will become a very important tool in the future if developers learn to use its good features. We’re already seeing this today, and in any case it should be seen as a simple continuation of what has always been done in video games, because AI has been used in video games for as long as they have existed in reality.
Designers and developers therefore need to master these new generative tools. It’s just a matter of time, as long as we keep human artists at the heart of the project. Generative AI and its other emanations can and should be used to speed up processes and tedious tasks that don’t impact on the artistic aspect of games, especially for small studios that don’t have the manpower. This could also help to lower game production costs, making the video game economy more viable – as long as it doesn’t lead to redundancies, of course.
Generative AI like Midjourney, for example, is an innovation that shouldn’t be dismissed because it’s here to stay anyway, but we need to learn how to master it.
PSI: One of the current trends in AI is that of drawings and images resembling the artistic style of Studio Ghibli. Do you think such trends could facilitate plagiarism in video games, when you can simply copy models from other games and put them in another?
Shuhei Yoshida: Yes, I saw this trend with Studio Ghibli, and it was very funny (laughs)! I saw people making models with my face, and it was very well done.
On the question of plagiarism on a more serious note, I don’t know if this will encourage it, because you don’t necessarily need AI to plagiarize others. I’m actually more worried about the imitation aspect of AI, because beyond plagiarism, AI can now imitate a work at a lower cost. Fortunately, these imitations never reach the level of the original games.
PSI: On a more personal note, can you tell us about one or two great moments in your career at PlayStation? Are there any achievements that you’re proud of, but that you feel we haven’t talked about enough?
Shuhei Yoshida: I always like to talk about Journey, developed by Thatgamecompany with Santa Monica. It’s a game I love and it’s absolutely fantastic. I’m really proud to have played a part in its conception, and to have seen the critical and public success it has enjoyed.
And to talk about a “success” in my career that hasn’t been mentioned enough, if at all, I’ll give you an anecdote that I’ve never told in public before. It was the early days of the first PlayStation, and Kazunori Yamauchi was working on the very first Gran Turismo. You’ll remember that on the cover it said that the game was the “real driving simulator”. And you know, I’m not a game designer, I’m a producer first and foremost. During development, Kazunori Yamauchi showed me a prototype of Gran Turismo, and I was among the first to play it. And to tell you the truth, he was really serious when he talked about simulation (laughs)!
It was extremely advanced, perhaps too much so. But at first Kazunori Yamauchi didn’t take my feedback at face value, so he gathered around thirty consumers to test the game. And just as I expected, they all crashed without exception at the first turn, because the gameplay was so difficult. I was at the back of the room with Kazunori Yamauchi, at which point he turned to me and told me I was right, and that’s when he rounded things off and toned down the pure simulation aspect a little to put out the Gran Turismo you know today on PS1.
In a way, I like to think that I partly saved Gran Turismo’s fate, and that I played a small part in its success (laughs)!
PSI (Yacine): Well, thank you very much, because I’m a big fan of Gran Turismo, and if they’d kept it at that level of simulation, I wouldn’t have been able to play it (laughs)!
Shuhei Yoshida: You’re welcome, it’s a pleasure (laughs).
PSI: During your years at PlayStation, you’ve seen many people come and go and rise through the ranks. Which of your colleagues has played the most important role in your career, and why?
Shuhei Yoshida: If I may, I’d like to mention two people.
The first is of course Ken Kutaragi, the father of the PlayStation. Everything has been said about him. He was there when I arrived at Sony, and it was his vision that really led the company to become the video game behemoth it is today.
The second person is Akira Sato (one of the founders of Sony Interactive Entertainment and head of first-party game development at the time, editors note). I could also mention other people such as Andrew House and Kaz Hirai, with whom I have worked extensively.
PSI: Speaking of Ken Kutaragi, we don’t know if you’ve seen it, but there was recently a photographer, Julian Domanski, who met him and Mr. Kutaragi showed him a Nintendo PlayStation prototype. And we wanted to ask you if you had any PlayStation-related memorabilia at home that you could show us?
Shuhei Yoshida: What you need to know is that Ken Kutaragi is a big star in Japan, and his status has enabled him to have and collect many objects linked to the history of PlayStation (laughs). But for the other employees, including me, that wasn’t the case! We were temporarily able to have certain objects or prototypes, but once I left PlayStation I couldn’t take anything with me. Not everyone is Ken Kutaragi…
PSI: In recent years, PlayStation has undergone several changes at the top. Jim Ryan has left, and Hideaki Nishino and Hermen Hulst have replaced him. What legacy do you think Jim Ryan will leave at PlayStation, and are you confident about the future of the brand under the new leadership?
Shuhei Yoshida: Jim Ryan is a businessman. He ran PlayStation the way he knew how, guided by the numbers, and there’s no denying that his tenure was successful in that regard, as he took PlayStation to a level of growth it had never seen before.
We should also commend his management of PlayStation during Covid, because it wasn’t easy at all to manage the launch of the PS5 between Tokyo, London and Los Angeles with impossible time differences and new ways of working to incorporate.
Today, I am very excited about the new leadership with Hideaki Nishino on one side and Hermen Hulst on the other, because at the helm of PlayStation we have a business mind in Nishino, who will take care of the products and hardware, and an artistic and technical mind in Hulst, who comes from Guerrilla and really knows how game development works. I’ve worked with Hermen Hulst for a long time and I know he has the eye and the ability to continue to ensure that PlayStation has the best games.
So I have to say that I’m excited and I think Sony has made the right choice for the post-Jim Ryan era by selecting Hideaki Nishino and Hermen Hulst.
PSI (Yacine): It’s true that it’s exciting, especially since Hermen Hulst comes from Guerrilla Games and Horizon is one of the best PlayStation games in my humble opinion. That being said… Since leaving PlayStation, you’ve done several interviews. First, can you tell us about the most interesting question you’ve been asked since leaving, and second, what do you want to do next in the video game industry? Do you want to run a company again, or are you more interested in being an observer or analyst?
Shuhei Yoshida: In terms of my role in the industry, since leaving PlayStation, I’ve become an advisor to a few video game publishers and studios. I worked with Bokeh Game Studios on Slitterhead, for example, and that was easy because there are some former Japan Studio employees at the studio whom I know well. I also advise former Annapurna developers who left the company to start a new studio. There’s also a publisher I’m working with a lot at the moment called Kepler Interactive. That should ring a bell for you as Frenchmen, because they’re about to release Clair Obscur! (The interview was conducted before the game’s release, editor’s note).
PSI (Geoffrey): We can’t wait to play Clair Obscur: Expedition 33!
Shuhei Yoshida: Me too! I really enjoy working with Kepler Interactive, especially because we collaborated when I was head of PlayStation Indies. I really enjoyed helping with the production of Tchia, which is an incredible game also made by French developers (laughs), even though they moved to Canada.
As for questions in interviews, I don’t know if I can pick one out. What I do is make sure I space out the interviews I give so that journalists have time to watch or listen to them, and then come up with different and original questions so that readers and viewers don’t get a sense of repetition. That’s what allowed me, for example, to tell you the anecdote about Gran Turismo that I had never told before. Thank you for letting me talk about it, it was a good question!
PSI: Thank you! This year, Ghost of Yotei will be one of PlayStation’s biggest exclusives. How do you explain the success of the first game, and is there a formula for Western games to work in Japan? We know it’s historically a difficult market, and the recent example of Assassin’s Creed Shadows shows that.
Shuhei Yoshida: Japan is a difficult market for Western games, that’s true. But I don’t know if there’s a recipe as such. I think you need an understanding of Japan and its culture, especially for games like Ghost of Tsushima or Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which are set in the country and talk about its history.
In the case of Ghost of Tsushima, Sucker Punch worked extensively with a Japanese producer at SIE, as well as colleagues at Japan Studio. This was a great help to the studio because the developers could show them their ideas and these Japanese people would tell them internally whether or not they were respectful of Japan and correct. The teams also visited Tsushima Island and made a real effort to immerse themselves in its history and traditions. They managed to capture the island’s unique atmosphere, which can be felt in the game, for example in the wind system, and I think that’s why it’s so successful. The game has even boosted tourism on Tsushima Island, which says a lot.
So, if you want to sell well in Japan, especially when you’re making a game about Japan, it’s important to have a development process that seeks to understand the country throughout. Ghost of Tsushima felt incredible to play, and having played Ghost of Yotei at several stages of its development, I can assure you that it will be even better and that Sucker Punch has done it again!
PSI: You mentioned China, South Korea and Southeast Asia in general. We wanted to talk to you about these emerging actors who are producing high-quality games that are enjoying global success. Do you think these actors will be able to sustain their success, and that Sony, for example, will be able to capitalise on the growth of these studios, as it has already done with Black Myth Wukong and Stellar Blade?
Shuhei Yoshida: They make great games, they really do! I think these players will continue to release high-quality games, that’s obvious. I was impressed by Black Myth Wukong, for example. The growth of Chinese and South Korean studios is remarkable, and above all, they’ve caught up technologically in just a few years.
I also think it’s important that Southeast Asian studios produce games that reflect their countries and cultures. One of the main reasons for the success of Black Myth Wukong is that Chinese players identified with its story and the legends it tells.
As for PlayStation, the launch of labels such as the China Hero Project and the signing of publishing deals helps to identify promising studios and help them achieve global recognition. When a partnership like the one signed for Stellar Blade works, it’s good for everyone, and PlayStation benefits by seeing a new viable partner emerge. Black Myth Wukong has been a huge hit on PS5 in China, and this success shows that PlayStation needs to continue down this path.
PSI (Geoffrey): I played Stellar Blade recently and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the game. It’s great to see other countries like South Korea and China releasing such big games. I hope this becomes the norm in the future. On the other hand, in recent years we’ve seen the industry return to shorter AA games, such as AstroBot, for example. In a recent interview, Nicolas Doucet (head of Team Asobi, ed.) said that it makes sense to release smaller games that have just as much impact. Do you see this as a real alternative for the industry, and more specifically, do you think Team Asobi could become once again PlayStation’s new… Japan Studio (laughs)?
Shuhei Yoshida: I hope Asobi becomes the Japan Studio that PlayStation lost (laughs). I think PlayStation needs a studio that can develop AA games of such high quality with tighter budgets but just as much success, and they’re doing that.
There has to be another way forward for the industry than moving in the direction of ever longer and more technically demanding games. So it’s studios like Asobi that PlayStation needs to support, I would even say as a priority. Of course, the AAA exclusives that PlayStation releases are incredible, but they will never be viable on their own, and the release portfolio can’t be empty between the release of each big exclusive. We need what I call ‘middle ground games’.
The industry as a whole needs to realise that this technological and economic race forward will lead it into a brick wall if it is not balanced with viable AA and independent games whose studios are properly funded. Personally, I’m starting to lose interest in overly long AAA games because you never see the end of them!
I think, for example, that a game like Clair Obscur strikes the perfect balance between the ambition of a AAA game, an AA budget and studio, and an independent vision. All this combined, at an affordable price and with a respectable lifespan, will make it a great game, and this is the path the industry should be pursuing. It’s a game developed by only 33 people, which is incredible! I hope the game gets the success it deserves, because it’s time for AA games to regain their market share. In the case of Japan Studio, their problem was also the strategic mismatch between SIE’s strategy to support AAA games and the size of Japan Studio’s games.
But the team’s return to the top with AstroBot, which won the GOTY, shows that this market is open again.
PSI (Yacine): Given the success of AstroBot, particularly with its crossovers and numerous cameos, do you think a game like PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale could appeal to players today by following this path, and why do you think it didn’t work when it was released? To be precise, we have a member of the team called Marc who loves PS All-Stars Battle Royale. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t ask you that question, so here it is (laughs)!
Shuhei Yoshida: That’s an excellent question, thank you very much, and my regards to Marc! At the time the game was released, the Super Smash Bros-style Battle Royale was all the rage. And during the design phase, we had two choices.
The first was to make a copy of what already existed and rely on the appeal of PlayStation’s iconic characters to achieve success. The second option was to go for something more original, with gameplay based on earning action points to eliminate your opponent using a bar at the bottom of the screen, if you remember.
Either way, players would have had complaints about the game because we were entering the realm of Smash Bros, which is legendary.
In short, it was difficult for us to make a game that stood out enough from Smash Bros. to avoid being accused of being a ‘copycat’, while still staying within the formula that appealed to the audience. We didn’t quite manage to strike that balance.
PSI: Continuing on the subject of Japan Studio, we recently saw that some of their games, such as Patapon and Everybody’s Golf, will be released on Nintendo Switch. What do you think of this new strategy by PlayStation to bring certain IPs to Nintendo? Is this a viable strategy to keep PlayStation’s IP portfolio alive?
Shuhei Yoshida: I did see those announcements from Nintendo. It’s a different approach, because in my day we were mainly tasked with protecting our IPs to maintain the full strength of the PlayStation brand. The idea was to continue producing games from our portfolio and, when that was no longer possible, to find a way to keep them alive within the PlayStation ecosystem.
Today, I think it’s interesting to relaunch certain IPs on Nintendo Switch. It allows these games to live on or be revived at a lower cost while retaining the intellectual property. Let’s not forget that Patapon 1+2 is also coming to PlayStation, which is just as important. Of course, I’d love to see these IPs revived with new games, but in the meantime, this is a good way to keep them on the market. I’m very happy to see Everybody’s Golf back, and I highly recommend it!
PSI: On the subject of keeping IPs alive, let’s talk about the crucial issue of video game preservation. In simple terms, do you think the industry is doing enough to preserve its history?
Shuhei Yoshida: First of all, you have to understand how difficult it is to work on preserving video games, given the number of different operating systems that are not all compatible with each other. That’s why emulation is one of the best preservation tools, because it allows you to bypass all these barriers.
The hardest part is actually preserving the availability of games at any given time, even when the machines they run on are no longer on the market. This is where emulation and digitalization can have an even greater impact, as even backward compatibility between consoles from the same manufacturer can sometimes be difficult to achieve, as we saw with the PS3.
PSI: Would you say that PlayStation is doing enough with the PlayStation Plus Premium tier, for example?
Shuhei Yoshida: Exactly, thank you for saying that. It’s a way of preserving the history of video games. It’s a good thing, because it’s always sad to realise that a game is no longer available. PlayStation Plus is therefore a step in the right direction, and it also allows us to manage the life cycle of a game and thus relaunch certain titles, which gain recognition by reaching a new audience, perhaps even managing to rekindle the interest of publishers. And sometimes, sequels are approved in this way, it’s a virtuous cycle.
PSI: Perhaps the moment we’ve enjoyed the most in your career is when you were head of the PlayStation Indies label. We loved Tchia, Stray… Listening to your recent interviews, you talked a lot about the process that led you to publish games. We wanted to ask you the opposite question: are there any games that, in hindsight, you would have liked to publish on PlayStation Indies, but didn’t get the chance to?
Shuhei Yoshida: That’s an excellent question. Here I can mention Nine Sols, the game by Taiwanese developers Red Candle Games, which was actually my favourite game of 2024. I would have loved to have come across the game and support it during my time at PlayStation Indies. I think it was released on PC first, so not directly on PlayStation. When I played it, I could feel the developers’ love for Taiwanese culture, which is something we don’t often see in video games. It’s always good to have projects from new countries.
PSI: What we also love about PlayStation is their constant support for Japanese video games. You said in an interview with AV Watch that you consider NieR Automata to be the game that revitalised Japanese video games after the long crisis of the PS3 era. Eight years later, how do you explain the success Japanese games are enjoying today? Is it due to a better understanding of technology, or greater mastery of gameplay compared to Western studios, which focus more on storytelling?
Shuhei Yoshida: That’s a very good question. I think it took the Japanese video game industry some time after the PS3 era to realise that the trend set by Western studios of pushing photorealism and imitating cinema wasn’t the only path to follow.
It took time, but Japanese developers managed to reclaim the technology, and above all, they realised once again that making truly Japanese video games was a selling point worldwide. This is where NieR Automata was particularly successful. The trend has therefore returned to games that are more immersed in their culture, but which are still well understood by foreign players.
And that’s how Japanese video games were revitalised. Studios started making games again with Japanese characters that were culturally identifiable and, above all, unique… It’s a bit like Rayman for you in France. Today, everyone identifies him with France and French culture in a way, and that’s also why it works!
So it was this willingness to take risks again that was rewarded. No video game country has ever stood out or found success by trying to copy the success of another. That’s kind of what’s happening on the other side today, as several studios have been inspired by the open-world formula of Zelda or the formula of FromSoftware games.
I would say that the recipe for the renewed success of Japanese video games is that they have returned to developing games that can only be made in Japan, by Japanese people. A game like Onimusha, which Capcom is releasing next year, is one title I’m really looking forward to in this regard. And it’s the same for other countries. For example, we’re seeing more and more games coming out of India that talk about Indian culture and are excellent nowadays, which is a good thing.
PSI: You’re right, the India Hero Project by PlayStation is very good in this area, for example. And on the subject of culture, we couldn’t interview you without asking you about your vision of French video games. How important do you think France and its market are for PlayStation, and is there a French game you’ve played recently that you liked?
Shuhei Yoshida: I really like French video games, there are some very good ones! In recent years, I’ve particularly enjoyed Sifu by Sloclap, which is an exception that proves the rule I mentioned earlier, because it’s a French video game that tries its hand at kung fu, and it was very successful. I also really liked Stray, which was very original in the way it introduced you to a world and remarkable in its animation of the cat.
I also really enjoyed working with David Cage and Quantic Dream when I was at PlayStation. Their games were truly memorable, from Heavy Rain to Beyond Two Souls and Detroit Become Human.
France is a very innovative country in the industry, always offering new experiences, and the depth and complexity of the choices in Quantic Dream’s games is proof of that. I also appreciate the way French studios take cultural influences and artistic references and turn them into integral parts of their games, as is the case with the works of Moebius.
PSI: Mister Yoshida, thank you very much for your time. It was a real honour to talk to you and to be the first French media outlet to interview you since you left PlayStation. Thank you very much, it has truly been the pleasure of a lifetime because we have been playing on PlayStation since we were kids. Thank you again!
Shuhei Yoshida: Thank you for the interview, it was a pleasure!
And that concludes our exceptional interview with Shuhei Yoshida! Thank you, dear readers, for reading it. As we mentioned it in the introduction, this conversation marks the end of PlayStation Inside and the beginning of ‘PSI’. We made this decision for editorial and financial reasons, which we hope you will understand. And rest assured: we won’t stop talking about PlayStation! Our history and heritage will be respected.
In the meantime, we’d like to share a few words from the two people behind this interview, Geoffrey Lerch and Yacine Ouali, who want to say how much this interview with Shuhei Yoshida and this adventure have meant to them.
‘The interview with Shuhei Yoshida marks the end of the PlayStation Inside era and the beginning of a new era for PSI. When we first started the project, we never imagined we would one day be able to talk to such an industry and PlayStation icon, but time has once again proven itself and made the unimaginable possible. Anything is possible as long as you plant the seeds for a promising future. I would like to thank everyone who has helped us get this far since the creation of PlayStation Inside, and I hope that the next chapter of this adventure will celebrate video games in all their forms, because despite everything, this medium deserves to be celebrated.’
Geoffrey Lerch, co-founder of PlayStation Inside and forever the first person to come up with the idea behind its inception
‘Since the beginning of the PlayStation Inside adventure, there has been no greater honour than interviewing Shuhei Yoshida. A true living legend of PlayStation, Yoshida embodies a golden age (nostalgia inevitably comes into play) that is the era in which we grew up. Having the opportunity to talk to him for an hour is a memory I will cherish for the rest of my life. And what an honour that PlayStation Inside is the first French media outlet to which he has granted an interview since leaving PlayStation! So, now that the PSI adventure is about to begin, I would like to thank everyone, both inside and outside the team, who has helped us get this far. As they say, this is only the beginning… See you soon for more articles and debates on video games!’
Yacine Ouali, co-founder and editor-in-chief of PlayStation Inside
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