
Shuhei Yoshida Says He Would've Resisted the Push Towards Live Service Games - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 16 January 2025 / 2,991 ViewsThe former President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida in an interview with Kinda Funny revealed he would've resisted the push towards live services games.
"For me, I was managing this budget, so I was responsible for allocating money to what kinds of games to make," said Yoshida (via VideoGamesChronicle). "If the company was considering [going] that way, it probably didn’t make sense to stop making another God of War or single-player game, and put all the money into the live service games.
“However, what they did when I left and Hermen [Hulst] took over is the company gave us a lot more resources. I don’t think they told Hermen to stop making single-player games. [They said] 'these games are great, keep doing that, and we’ll give you additional resources to work on these live service games and try it.'"
He added: "I’m sure they knew it was risky. The chance of a game becoming successful in this hugely competitive genre would be small. However, the company, knowing that risk, gave Hermen the resources and chance to try it. I think that’s the way they did it. In my mind, that’s great, and hopefully some games will become successful.
"Luckily, Helldivers 2 did so well… nobody expected that. So you can’t plan a success in this industry, that’s the most fun part of this business. I hope that this strategy will work in the end. If I was in the Hermen’s position, probably I would’ve tried to resist that direction. Maybe that’s one of the reasons they removed me from the first-party!"
Yoshida stepped down as President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios in 2019 and became the PlayStation Head of Independent Developer Initiative. He left PlayStation this month.
He went on to explain his decision to leave PlayStation after over 30 years at the company.
"On one hand, I was enjoying what I was doing. We had so many great times within the organization, [and] so many great games and IPs to work on," he said. "I totally enjoyed working on first-party game development and in my mind, I didn’t have any interest to work elsewhere in the company other than game development after so many years.
"But when they offered me this idea to do something on indies, at that time, the company was criticized for not supporting indies enough. At the launch of PS4, in the [former executive] Adam Boyes days, we were promoting indies so well and the industry loved it. I loved what Adam’s team was doing…
"I was very worried about that trend as well, and how we were being seen. So when Jim [Ryan, former PlayStation CEO] said, 'Shu, we’ve been criticized, we’re not doing enough for indies,' I said, 'yeah, yeah, you should do something about it,' and Jim said, 'no, I want you to do something about it!'"
He added, "I thought it was something I cared about, and I thought I could uniquely do something about. After 11 years managing Worldwide Studios, even though I enjoyed it and was proud of what we accomplished, leading the group with the same person for such a long time might not be a great thing. Like talking about live service games, people who have one way of thinking and looking at games… some things I’m not interested in and wouldn’t even try.
"Like, I was totally not interested in movies being made based on our game IP: the film industry looked down on us and they didn’t respect the creative aspect of video games, and they made very bad movies when they tried. So I had no interest, but after I left, look at all these great movies and TV shows being made."
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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Live service games were a mistake.
In my soon-to-be-down-voted-into-oblivion opinion, everything EVERY ONE did post-sixth gen was a mistake. I feel like up until then, games were games and consoles were consoles. After, it all became something nearly unrecognizable.
I HIGHLY agree with you.
6th gen was the last true console/gaming gen it all slowly went to shit after.
Don't get me started on paying for online multiplayer.
Tell Epic that they made a huge amount of money with it. Helldivers 2 might also be the most successful title ever published by Sony.
Path of exile and Helldivers are good..... as are alot of MMO's imo (FF14,F11, ect).
It depends on the game, like I wouldn't mind seeing Playstation or (SOE) get another crack at a MMO. I enjoyed Vanguard - saga of heroes. However you cannot just put any IP into a GaaS type game and expect it to do well... and the "easy mode" hero shooter thingy is crowded. Enough with all these pvp battle shooters.
Fortnite LAME!!!!!
And thats why hes not the CEO lmao
Thaaaaanks Sony
He's a real one unlike Hulst and Spencer.
they was best at single player games and they sold millions of copies.. you have to make the right game for live service to work
Damn so no hell divers 2? I don't like that.
It would have to be a different genre is all.
The development of that game took 8 years. I'm not sure Sony would have been that patient with them if it wasn't a live service game.
That's why he's the goat
To be fair to Sony, 1 massive failure and 1 massive hit isn't exactly a good subset to gather data and most of the development of those would have been started or being done around the time when things like Fortnite, Apex and even Fall Guys were peaking. Conveniently when we were all at home and no one could see our friends... so we played with our friends. :P
Last year, Sony also published 4 new single player (or fun local MP) games and only 2 live service (plus 3 remaster and a sports game). Their current announced games include 2 MP games out of like 8 (Oh and whatever Bungie are working on).
People act like Sony are only doing GaaS when it's clearly not the case, they seem to want to do a mix of games as before, they weren't catering to MP aspects of gaming at all really, so now they are trying but it's obvious they aren't focusing on it.
At one point, Sony had 12 live service games in development. With only 20 something studios. 60% of their output was going to be live service. So while it's not the "only" thing they were doing; they did go from 100% single player/with multiplayer modes to 40% of that in the pipeline.
"Had" being key word there.
People are acting like Sony have stopped putting out big single player epics, yet 4 of their biggest studios are working on single player epics right now, 2 soon to release. So, what if one of their smaller studios are making a live service?
Don't get me wrong, I want single player games as well but if they only make single player they aren't catering to a certain audience (or have the same sustained income gained from modern mp games) and they don't want to get into a position (or fear of) where, say for example, a big mega corporation decides to buy the biggest MP games on the entire market and then remove them from their console.
So now we know why he was pushed out, even though he is too polite to say it straight up.
Just like he resisted Demon Souls?
Hindsight is 2020
Easy to say this now that the verdict is out.