Either that or “leave the company”.
“Well, I had no choice,” said Yoshida about the move.
He continued: “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 explained PlayStation had been criticised by indie developers, that “PlayStation doesn’t care about indies”.
“You don’t hear that kind of criticism anymore,” said Yoshida.
Some games sold better on PlayStation than on PC.
Bit by bit, that gap has narrowed down.
We have a strong team inside the company supporting indies."
Yoshida left PlayStation last month, though clarified in this interview that he hasn’t retired.
As such, he plans to still work with indie developers.
“Oh, yeah.
I love working with these younger, talented developers,” said Yoshida.
“They come up with amazing games every year.
They’re bringing something exciting to the industry.
It’s a lot of fun.
That’s my dream job, to be able to help them.”
“I think it’s an overreaction to the Covid situation,” he said.
“Companies invested too much, including ourselves.
Then we had to face reality and make adjustments.
If you take out the Covid years you’d have smoother growth over the years.”
“Crash Bandicoot was my first product, though,” he said.
“Mark Cerny andNaughty Dogtaught me a lot.
They trained me as a producer.”
A big shift at Sony happened ahead of the PS4.
“We were losing a billion dollars.
I thought PlayStation was finished.”
That’s how the controller’s Share button was created, for instance.
“Starting with PS4 and PS Vita, that wall broke down,” said Yoshida.
“We became part of the hardware design process.
Lots of things about the hardware came from ideas and feedback from the game team.
So we loved the system.
We knew what we were getting.
We were making prototypes based on the hardware prototypes.”
They put the ball on the tee and let us take our swing.
We couldn’t have asked for better competition."
