After retiring from SIE in January 2025, Shuhei Yoshida has just broken his silence in a new interview where he details the closing of an AA development studio.
The former president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, recently retired from his role at SIE in January 2025, and since then he has remained relatively quiet on the gaming industry front—until today. Yoshida is known for being the president of SIE during one of the most fortuitous times in the company’s history, most notably appearing in the iconic PS4 unboxing video from November 2013. Yoshida’s influence has continued since then until his retirement this year, and the “Greatness Awaits” video from 2013 can be seen below.
Today, in an interview with AV WATCH (loosely translated by Google), Shuhei Yoshida shared some insights into the inner workings of Sony’s game development operations. Yoshida began by explaining his position, saying, “I was in charge of the first-party side of things, so I was asked to make a game that would sell the hardware. If we made something like that, the company would really push for it.” He stated that PlayStation’s primary goal was to produce titles that would make consumers want to buy the hardware.
Shuhei Yoshida then goes on to explain that Japanese developers would often come up with ideas that he deemed “very creative and interesting,” but they weren’t considered to be on the scale of what Sony executives wanted. These ideas were ultimately categorized as AA projects rather than the AAA model that was prioritized at the time.
Yoshida says, “That’s also the reason why JAPAN Studio disappeared after I left my position as President of Worldwide Studios,” adding, “At that time, JAPAN Studio was a studio and a team that was good at making AAs,” which was not the company’s focus at the time.
Yoshida ultimately attributes to studios like JAPAN Studios closing shop based on the impact globalization has had on the company as a whole. Shuhei Yoshida concludes, “Even though we created interesting Japanese-style games, companies were not very keen to push them, and there was a time when we struggled to make a return on our investment.” JAPAN Studio notably shuttered in 2021, being succeeded by TEAM Asobi, leading to the GOTY title Astro Bot.
Interestingly enough, Shuhei Yoshida reportedly told VentureBeat he was forced to step down from his AAA role in 2019 by CEO Jim Ryan just last month. He was demoted in favour of becoming the head of the Independent Developer Initiative. Yoshida was then reportedly replaced by Herman Hulst, who has now also been demoted from his co-CEO role, with Hideaki Nishino assuming the role of sole CEO.
