Shuhei Yoshida leaves PlayStation after 31-years: 'It was a dream job.'

Sony announced that Shuhei Yushida, a key figure in the history of PlayStation and one of its first members, will retire after 38 years at the company. Of those 38 years, 31 were spent with PlayStation. Yoshida, who joined Sony in 1986, was given his first PlayStation role in 1993 as the third party licensing manager. He then went on to produce and supervise many other titles, including Gran Turismo.

Yoshida has left a lasting legacy on PlayStation through the senior positions he has held since the early 2000s. He was first vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment America and then senior vice-president of SCE Worldwide Studios USA. From 2008, he became president of SCE Worldwide Studios. Sony was able to enjoy the huge success of the PlayStation 2 during this period and dominated the market for a while, before the leaner days of PlayStation 3. Yoshida's public image was boosted with the PlayStation 4.

What is the highlight? The highlight has to be PlayStations response to Xbox One's disastrous reveal in 2013. Microsoft made a mess out of the announcement and people were particularly upset that Xbox One would prevent you from sharing your physical games. Sony's response was 21 seconds in length and is arguably the best gaming roast ever.

Yoshida, who stepped down from his position as president of SIE Worldwide Studios at the end of 2019, has been focusing on developing smaller titles for the platform since then as the head of Indies Initiative. He was interviewed on the PlayStation Podcast to mark his departure, and he is as charming as ever. "It's almost like announcing a new release date," Yoshida chuckles, "something I haven't been doing for a while."

Yoshida: "I have been with PlayStation since the beginning. This is my 31st anniversary with PlayStation. When I reached 30 years I thought, hmm... it might be time to move on. You know, this company is doing well. I love PS5, and I love the new games that are coming to this platform. We have new management that I admire and respect. I'm excited about the future of PlayStation.

"You know, PlayStation is in good hands." I thought, "Okay, this is it."

Yoshida also reflects on his time in Ken Kutaragi’s team, which was still building the PlayStation console when he joined them in February 1993. Yoshida says that Ken's team was made up of only engineers. "Everyone is an engineer." I was the only non-technical member of the team. Sony Computer Entertainment was founded in November of that year. Yoshida recalls the excitement of bringing an innovative product to the console market. "We were so excited by the innovations that Ken's group was bringing in. Like 3D graphics, Real-time Technology, and CD-ROMs with lots of information that we can put into with a low-cost of manufacturing. We had high expectations and high ambitions.

"However, however, we were not well-known in the videogames industry. There were other big companies who tried to enter the industry of videogames and didn't succeed. "I think that at the beginning, before the launch, the industry did not take us very seriously.

The success of PlayStation would not have been possible without the third-party licensing. Its launch titles, such as Ridge Racer and Tekken are unimaginable, let alone later classics, like Resident Evil and Final Fantasy 7.

Yoshida was asked at one point about his best PlayStation memories. Yoshida says, "I remember a time that I really, really cherish. It was when Journey won the Game of the Year Award." "Journey is distributed through PlayStation Network. It was a small, digital-only game. You can play the game in about three hours.

"But that game... [won] Game of the Year, I think for the very first time in the history of the industry... the creator Jenova... spoke at the summit and talked about a note he received from an 11-year-old girl who had lost her father. She thought about him and was able to move forward in her life.

"The entire audience stood up, and the room was filled with happiness. It was amazing to think that such a small game could make such a huge impact on people's life."

You can tell that he loved his job: "When i was managing, working in big studios and making AAA games, it was great." Yoshida claims he fell into his current role by accident because he would always find indie titles at events. He would "take photos with the developers, trying to promote these games... that's almost what I was doing as a hobby." When I got the job where I could devote 100% of my time to helping indies, it felt like a dream.

It's a bit of a joke to try to guess the personalities of corporate executives. But Yoshida always struck me as a very nice man. And in every photo or presentation, he seems to have an evil glint. He will officially retire from Sony on January 20, 2025. Microsoft executives will finally be able to stop having nightmares over a smiling Japanese man and his retail Killzone copy.