After 31 Years, Former President And Original PlayStation Dev Team Member Shuhei Yoshida To Retire From Sony Interactive Entertainment
In a development that essentially puts a capstone on the company’s ‘golden era of video game development’, former Sony Interactive Entertainment President Shuhei Yoshida has announced that after 31 years, his time with the entertainment company is coming to an end.
Yoshida, who began his career with Sony in February 1993 as the resident third-party licensor on Ken Kutaragari’s original sub-100 member PlayStation console development team before being promoted to SIE VP in 2000 and then President in 2008, delivered this news during a recent appearance on the PlayStation Podcast.
Therein, the industry icon candidly confirmed to his host, SIE Senior Director of Content Communications Sid Shuman, that he will officially “be leaving [the company][ on January 15th, 2025.”
“It’s like announcing the launch date of a new game,” ” Yoshida quipped during the interview,” [it’s something] I haven’t done for a long time.”
Asked as to why he felt now was the right time for him to retire, Yoshida explained, “I’ve been with PlayStation from the beginning, and this is my 31st year with PlayStation. And when I hit 30 years, I was thinking, ‘Hmm, it may be about time for me to move on.’
“You know, the company’s been doing great,” he added. “I love PS5, I love the games that are coming out on this platform. And we have new generations of management who I respect and admire. And I’m so excited for the future of PlayStation. So you know, PlayStation is in really good hands. I thought, okay, this is my time.”
Following this reveal, the longtime PlayStation veteran turned to reflect on his time with the company.
Beginning with a trip back to 1993, Yoshida said of his time working on the original PlayStation console, “We were very small. Ken’s team was doing the development, and there was another team under Sony Music Entertainment Japan making games for Super Nintendo, and that was another small team preparing to make games for PlayStation.”
“So the two teams merged, Ken’s team under Sony and Sato-san’s team under Sony Music Entertainment Japan, to create Sony Computer Entertainment in November 1993,” he recalled. “When the company was established as a joint venture, we held a party and everybody was in one room at the hotel [laughs]. I remember we had about 80 people total. We were very small.”
And though he says the fledgling members of SIE “were so excited about the innovation that Ken’s team was bringing in, like 3D graphics, real-time technology, and CD-ROM with lots of data that we can put in with a low cost of manufacturing,” they also had to deal with the reality that not only were they attempting a major paradigm shift regarding game development, but they were also attempting to do so when they “were not known in the video game industry.”
“There were other electronics companies, big companies that tried to enter the video game industry and, you know, didn’t do well,” said Yoshida. “So at the beginning before the launch of PlayStation, I think we were not taken very seriously from the industry, to be honest.”
“When I joined Ken’s team, my assignment was to talk to publishers and developers in Japan,” he further detailed. “So as a lead in account management, I made a phone call to many companies in Japan, publishers and developers from Hokkaido to Kyushu and made an appointment and brought a group of people of executives including Ken Kutaragi himself, to visit the publisher and talk about PlayStation, hoping that they would make games on PlayStation. So that was a really fun time, but also a really challenging time because not many people in the industry believed in 3D graphics technology at that time.”
In addition to helping launch the PlayStation brand, Yoshida also served as the President of PlayStation Studios during the PS3 and PS4 eras.
And while his leadership saw the company deliver a number of industry-defining titles like inFamous, the first Marvel’s Spider-Man, and Tokyo Jungle, the executive says that the success of one game in particular stands out in his memory: Thatgamecompany’s indie adventure title Journey.
“Journey was distributed through PlayStation Network,” he reminisced. “It was a digital-only, small game. You can finish playing the game within like three hours. But that game…[won] Game of the Year against all these AAA titles, I think for the first time in the industry….the creator Jenova Chen did a talk at the summit, and he talked about a letter he received from a girl who lost her father and she thought about her father and she was able to move on in her life. The whole audience stood up and the whole room was filled with happiness and an amazing feeling that this small game could have such a big impact on people’s lives.”
Moments like these, where games transcend entertainment to touch lives, epitomizes the meaningful work Yoshida championed throughout his career.
In recent years, after stepping down as SIE President in 2019 (with Guerilla Games’ studio head Herman Hulst stepping up to take his place), Yoshida has worked as SIE’s Head of Indies Initiative, where he has been looking to give more support to smaller developers.
“It was like treasure hunting for me,” he said, describing his excitement at discovering new, experimental games. “When I was managing [PlayStation Studios] working with big studios, making AAA games was great. However, when I went to events like E3 or Gamescom, I always went to the indie game area. And I found games that I liked, and oftentimes the developer was there showcasing it. So, I’d take a photo with the developer, trying to help promote these games.”
“That’s what I was doing almost as a hobby when I was managing PlayStation Studios,” he concluded. “So when I got this job where I could spend 100% of my time helping indies, it was like a dream job.”
At current, it’s unknown just what will come next for Yoshida – and, for that matter, whether or not he’ll say in the industry.
But until this news is confirmed, fans can catch Shuman’s full interview with Yoshida via the PlayStation Podcast, as currently available via Apple, Spotify, or direct download.
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