Shuhei Yoshida Says Jim Ryan Fired Him as PlayStation Studio President Due to Not Listening - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 20 April 2026 / 4,043 Views
Shuhei Yoshida, who served as the President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios from 2008 to 2019, has revealed Jim Ryan fired him from the role as he didn't listen.
In 2019, Yoshida was moved to another initiative that focused on building relationships with independent developers as Hermen Hulst replaced him as president. He would leave the company in January 2025.
"I helped Santa Monica to make God of War, Naughty Dog to make Uncharted and The Last of Us, and Sucker Punch to make the beautiful Ghost of Tsushima," said Yoshida (via This Week in Video Games). "Ghost of Tsushima was one of the last games that I worked on as the president of Worldwide Studios.
“But in 2019, after 11 years leading the first-party development, I was fired from the role. Jim Ryan wanted to remove me from first-party because I didn’t listen to him. He asked to do some ridiculous things, and I said 'No.'"
Yoshida did reveal last year he was forced to step down to take over the role of the Head of Indies Initiative.
"Moving from first-party to indies? Well, I had no choice," said Yoshida at the time. "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. 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. I’m very lucky that the indie community, the publishers and developers I work closely with–they believed that they could use my help."
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Jim Ryan was crap, good riddance he is now gone.
"He asked to do some ridiculous things, and I said 'No.'"
I wonder what...
Yeah, it leads to the live service push IMO too, unless it was something even worse we gladly never got to see.
Or maybe he asked Shu to shut down Japan Studios and he refused to, if it was that my respect for Shu is even bigger now. It still got shut down but if someone was willing to lose such a job to try to fight it, it has my respect.
Sony should fire Hermen Hulst and rehire Shu in his place...
or
Nintendo should hire Shu to head their western studios/partners
And PS5's first-party output this gen has paled in comparison to the PS4, when Shu was there... Lol and Jim fired the guy while the PS4 was firing on all cylinders. What a bad move.
Probably the live service push which is unfortunate since he did a fantastic job with growing the 1st party library of games which gained big momentum during the PS3 and continued onto the PS4.
One of the best guys Playstation ever had, much love Shu.
He was a great president and even when he was moved to indies it looked like he was building a lot of goodwill for the brand.
Shu actually hated playing Demon's Souls, before it was released and it is the reason they did not publish it worldwide, indeed.
We probably would never have gotten Elden Ring or From Software might have closed by now without the Dark Souls PC meme boom, tho.
Massive mistake by Shu, regardless.
Should have never moved their HQ out of Japan
Playstation used to get trolled during the console wars period for their relationship with indie games and now look at gaming today, he had the vision
Shu should be running all of PlayStation right now. Ryan was a dumbfuck and so is Hulst
Can't believe people defended Jim
Hermen Hulst and Jim Ryan made Playstation a bad place for games and players. The only care about money not the games. Just look at all live service crap they forced the devs to make. For what? Sony need to move Playstation headquarter away from US back to Japan. Biggest mistake they made.
Microsoft should have picked him up to help with their Xbox division... I mean he certainly wouldn't have made it worse.
What a shitshow. Imagine if Shuhei had been allowed to keep doing what he was doing with the PS4, what great single player games we would have had on the PS5. Now all we have is a diminishing brand and billions wasted on live service failures. It's infuriating. Herman needs to go also, we need another guy like Shuhei in there ASAP.
rent free
what the hell are you talking about lmao
