Former PlayStation Boss Says He Had "No Choice" But To Take Indies Job

After a 38-year run at Sony, former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida bid farewell to the company earlier this year. In a new interview detailing his career, the former executive commented on how he was left with "no choice" but to step down from his position as president of SIE Worldwide Studios in 2019, as then PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan offered him the opportunity to either lead a new indies initiative for Sony or leave the company.

"Moving from first-party to indies? Well, I had no choice. When Jim asked me to do the indie job, the choice was to do that or leave the company. But I felt very strongly about the state of PlayStation and indies. I really wanted to do this," Yoshida said to VentureBeat. "I believed I could do something unique for that purpose. That was the bigger change for me personally, moving from first-party to indies, than leaving the company this year."

Yoshida's position would be filled by Hermen Hulst, who was also recently co-CEO of SIE alongside Hideaki Nishino for several months. While Yoshida is no longer working for Sony, he hasn't retired from the gaming industry and he currently works alongside indie publishers and developers as an independent advisor. Yoshida added that his ultimate goal during his final years at Sony was to cultivate a relationship with indie developers that would make his position obsolete.

"My personal goal, when I started the indie job, was to make my position obsolete," Yoshida said. "The company would be doing so well that there was no need for someone like me to tell everyone that this was important. I feel like we’ve achieved that pretty well. 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."

Since his departure, Yoshida has given numerous interviews detailing his time at Sony, including how he would have attempted to "resist" the push into live-service games had he still been in charge. Yoshida also commented on why there is no Bloodborne remaster and why the PlayStation Vita failed, amongst several other topics.

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