Shuhei Yoshida: PlayStation Prototypes Many Games That Never Get Released - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 May 2023 / 2,841 Views
PlayStation Head of Independent Developer Initiative Shuhei Yoshida in a new interview with The Guardian revealed PlayStation prototypes many games that eventually get cancelled.
"PlayStation embraces new ideas, and many of them fail," said Yoshida. "We do a prototype, we evaluate, we decide whether to spend more time and resources, or we just stop. We cancel so many games. I usually try to convince the developer that I’m trying to save them from getting stuck with this project.
"We tend to work with people who have very strong ideas, we love these people, so trying to change or stop their project is so hard. It’s all about talent in this industry. I have tried to help them as much as I could."
Yoshida did say the original God of War was his first game of the year award winner and he has since had six or seven game of the year winners.
"If you are involved in one GOTY game, that’s a good career I think, but for me it’s been six or seven."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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"If you are involved in one GOTY game, that’s a good career I think, but for me it’s been six or seven."
Indeed, Playstation projects are the most awarded in the last 15 years.
https://www.gameawards.net/?m=0
It's a true demonstration of quality and pedigree, a selection of the crème de la crème.
Yes, but all those major GOTY winners are Action-Adventure games. There are so many genres I wish Sony would touch, but either won't or don't anymore. Primarily because they put themselves in a creative corner where unless practically all their games sell gangbusters, they can't continue to invest in them because there has to be such an insane ROI that they can't afford to not make the games that they get meme'd on for making. As great as many of them are, variety is the spice of life. Creativity is all about risk taking.
I always think of that now infamous quote from Shawn Layden at E3 2014 where he was talking about a personal favorite game of his from the PS1 days called Vib Ribbon. He pointed out that it wasn't a multimillion seller, but that wasn't the point. It went against the tide, courageous in its ambition, and it brought a completely new experience to gamers. That's the PlayStation I want to see again, but I have a feeling a lot of these prototypes were tossed out because there wasn't a way to get mass appeal and that's why whenever gamers talk about creativity in gaming, they go to the indie scene.
Don’t put your words in other peoples mouth. I said each of the GOTY winners are Action-Adventure games, which yeah, is a genre Sony is very much known for. That doesn't in any way mean their games are the same. The sole similarity is that God of War and The Last of Us are Action-Adventure games like Halo and Gears of War are both Shooters. What I'm actually saying is I want Sony to flex their creative muscles to more genres. As an example, I’m a big RPG, FPS, and Strategy (turn-based and real-time) fan, which Sony does not cater to. Nintendo caters more to my personal tastes than Sony does. I've been loving the crap out of Advance Wars. One of the best Strategy games ever! You and I literally had a conversation in Club Nintendo about this lol.
Returnal is a good start for Sony on broadening their takes on different genres though with a Roguelike. Even Astro's Playroom was an incredibly fun and creative platformer that I want to see more of. It'd even be cool to see Sony venture into other genres like an Isometric RPG, Metroidvania, or even Survival Horror.
I loved Advance Wars 1 and 2 on the GBA, and I would totally pick that up if I had a Switch. But sadly, I don't, nor a desire to get one. If Nintendo made a Switch home console priced like the Switch Lite (but the opposite of the Switch Lite, meaning docked-only instead of handheld-only) then I'd totally pick that up though. A docked Switch isn't a convenient form factor for my set-up, plus I'd be paying extra to purchase a screen that I'll likely never use, but a home console-shaped Switch would totally work for me.
It's because there's such a flourishing indie scene, which Shuhei is involved in helping curate for PS, that it doesn't make sense for Sony themselves to invest in 1st party stuff like Vib Ribbon. What purpose does it serve besides someone having to say 'I'm so glad Sony developed an indie title'. And besides, stuff like Vib Ribbon weren't even developed by Sony to begin with, it was only published by them. And that is exactly the role XDev EU/ Asia serves: to help find and curate games that Sony themselves don't necessarily develop.
Sony haven't cornered themselves creatively into the market they push either: games like TloU, GoW and Horizon are not examples of stifled creativity just because they all use the 3rd person action adventure as a base. They're still wildly different games. Could Sony expand further into other genres? totally. But so could MS and Nintendo, who also have their preferred genre types.
No company is making games for all types of gamers.
This guy has much more charisma than Jim Ryan. I wonder how he would have handled the current PR disaster.
I do believe this. Plenty of good ideas end up not shaping out to what is necessary and knowing when to cut the loses is quite important to avoid losing more.
Shuhei is a legend!
And water is wet.
