The person who left Sony after 31 years did not leave as the head of a first-party, in-house studio!

Shuhei Yoshida led Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, the predecessor to PlayStation Studios, until 2019. But then came the announcement that he was stepping down to focus on indie developers. He was replaced by Hermen Hulst (who was at the helm of Guerrilla Games at the time). In a new interview, Yoshida revealed that he had no choice at the time: become an indie director or leave PlayStation. He enjoyed those five-plus years (and will continue his indie connections outside of Sony), but he took the new position because he loved indie games.

“Going from first-party to indies? Well, I had no choice. When Jim Ryan asked me to do the indie job, it was either do it or leave the company. But I felt very strongly about the state of PlayStation and indies. I really wanted to do it. I thought I could do something unique. That was the bigger change for me personally – moving from first-party to indies – than leaving the company this year. I’m very fortunate that the indie community, the publishers and developers that I work closely with, believed that they could use my help.

I became a consultant for some of those companies. I continue to work with some of the indie publishers and developers that I respect. Leaving Sony to become an independent consultant is less of a change than leaving first-party. My personal goal when I started the indie job was to make my position obsolete. The company would be doing so well that there would be no need for someone like me to be telling everyone that this is important. I feel like we’ve done a pretty good job of that. 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,” said Yoshida.

At least he enjoyed the new role, and that was the most important thing. If he had done his job out of necessity, he might not have stayed with Sony for another five years.

Source: VGC, VentureBeat