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For refusing to follow 'ridiculous' orders.
"Hello everyone and welcome back to another GRTV News. Today we're going to be talking a little bit about a report, or actually it's not really a report, it's a statement from one of the most influential people in modern video games. That individual being Shuei Yoshida, who has for a long while, or was for a long while, one of the key members of the PlayStation team over at Sony Interactive Entertainment. Yoshida left a few years ago, went off and did some other things, but that wasn't before having a change of roles, from basically being one of the top dogs at PlayStation, to then moving over and basically focusing on Sony's indie initiative. And at the time it seemed like an unusual move because it kind of like a step down in the career ladder in a way, but perhaps there's more to it. So let's dive on and explore this."
"So yeah, Shuei Yoshida says he was demoted by the PlayStation boss because he didn't want to follow ridiculous orders. Jim Ryan wanted to remove me from the first party because I didn't listen to him. He asked me to do some ridiculous things and I said no.
So it came as a bombshell in November, November 2024, when PlayStation veteran Shuei Yoshida suddenly announced that he would be leaving Sony after 31 years. At the time he was head of PlayStation Indies, but had previously served as president of SIE Worldwide Studios. It seemed then that he had taken a step down the career ladder rather than up, as many previously reported, or believe, sorry, he would become the head of the entire PlayStation division instead of Jim Ryan in 2019. That obviously didn't happen and Yoshida said in an interview with Gamefile last year that he believed it was because of his love for games and he wasn't, and that he wasn't primarily a business person. So probably because they didn't trust me as to making the best business decisions. I always wanted to do something interesting, you know, something new or innovative, or I'd never done before. That may become the great thing in the future, that kind of thing. Instead Sony preferred business minded people, he said at the time, reasoning that Kaz, Hirai, Andrew, House, Jim Ryan, all business people, right? So there must be a reason for that. That's Shuhei, by the way. Last week, Shuhei Yoshida appeared at the Australian gaming event Alt Games where he shared more about what happened behind the scenes when he was demoted at PlayStation on Jim Ryan's orders. 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. 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 first party development, I was fired from the role. Yoshida has previously said that he was given an ultimatum to either be fired or become head of indie games, but he now elaborates on what he believes led to this and says that, among other things, he refused to follow Ryan's ridiculous orders. Jim Ryan wanted to remove me from first party because I didn't listen to him. He asked me to do some ridiculous things and I said no. So Jim Ryan was controversial and, among gamers, often questioned head of PlayStation between 2019 and 2024 who, among other things, launched Sony's massive live service Gambit when virtually all games have either flopped or been shut down. This naturally led to absolutely massive costs while Sony released fewer single-player games overall because resources were diverted to other areas, something we're still feeling today and will likely continue to feel for years to come. We never know what the PlayStation division would have looked like under Yoshida's leadership, but we can still suspect it would have been radically different. Today, however, Yoshida assumes content and he concludes by saying, I was helping indie publishers and developers at Sony for the last five years, so I feel like I can continue to do the same kind of thing, but now I am freelance. I'm free to show up in any podcast and I can talk about Nintendo, Xbox, Steam, and I get to see how Nintendo and Xbox support indie, so it's very, very cool."
"What do you think of Jim Ryan's leadership and do you think Shuei Yoshida would have been a better alternative? Yeah, I mean, when you look back in hindsight, Shuei Yoshida would have been, without question, a better alternative than Jim Ryan for the simple reason that Jim Ryan hasn't done a whole lot or never did a whole lot of good as the PlayStation boss or the Sony boss, Sony Interactive Entertainment boss. When you look at what PlayStation has turned into over the last few years, it's all under the lead. That was all through the direction of Jim Ryan and it has not been very good for them from at least a consumer perspective, maybe on a business standpoint, they're all fine as long as those profit margins are hit and all that. So you'd have to say that in hindsight, Yoshida would have been a far better candidate for the role. It is interesting to see how he was sort of ousted a little bit, though, according to him anyway, this is one side of the story. There's always two sides to a story and this is only one side of it. So, you know, we have to take this information for what it is, but until there's a full, a full secular report that explores all different avenues of it, we'll have to sort of just remain a little bit distant from it. But if this is the way things went down, it's yet another stain on the legacy of Jim Ryan as the PlayStation or during his tenure as the PlayStation boss. I think, yeah, it's sort of caused immeasurable damage to PlayStation over the years, especially from the live service efforts that we're still feeling. And there's still there's still ones that are in the works and there's still ones that haven't come out yet."
"And, you know, you have to look at and say, probably not too confident about them. Like, for example, fair games, you know, we could have been down a road where, you know, Yoshida was focused, had all these different PlayStation developers, these talented studios focusing on more exceptional single player games. But instead we've had all these sort of."
"Immeasurable. Live service and multiplayer things. But anyway, it's interesting all the same to hear how this has gone. Again, I think, you know, Jim Ryan is no longer the head honcho at PlayStation.
So maybe he'll have something to say about this next time he appears somewhere. Or maybe he doesn't care. You know, he made a lot of money at the head of Sony, at the head of PlayStation."
"So maybe he won't care. It's hard to say, but, you know, Yoshida is still in the industry. He's still doing what he can to talk about things and to spotlight and champion games. And, you know, we've seen that recognized before, but I think last year he was the BAFTA fellowship, which is a very prestigious award for spotlighting a singular person every single year for what they've done over their career in the game sector. So interesting all the same. We'll have to stay tuned for more, but otherwise that's all the time that I have. So thank you for joining me today and I'll see you all tomorrow for the next GRTV News of the Week. Take care, everyone."
