The Friendly Face Of PlayStation Says Goodbye After 30 Years
Indie advocate Shuhei Yoshida is moving on from PlayStation.
Shuhei Yoshida is leaving PlayStation in January 2025, after more than 30 years at the company. Even if you don’t know that name, you’ve definitely seen his effect on the company, either as Worldwide Studios president, or in his later role as head of PlayStation’s Indies Initiative. Yoshida hasn’t said what his next move will be, though he confirmed on social media that he is not retiring and would like to stay in the games industry.
Yoshida has been with PlayStation since 1993, as a member of the team that launched the original console, led by Ken Kutanagi.
“Ken’s team had only engineers,” Yoshida told the PlayStation Podcast. “And I was the first non-technical person to join the team as the company, Sony Corporation at the time, started to plan to bring PlayStation to market.”
Yoshida was reward with a BAFTA Games Fellowship in 2023 for his contributions to the medium.
At first, Yoshida says, his role was “to talk to publishers and developers in Japan.” With the PlayStation still a total unknown in the games industry, it was up to Yoshida to convince game makers that this upstart console could be worth developing for. On top of PlayStation’s own newcomer status, Yoshida joined the company at a time when the industry itself was going through a massive technical evolution. Making his job harder was the fact that, “not many people in the industry believed in 3D graphics technology at the time,” according to Yoshida.
From there, Yoshida worked his way up to president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, a role he held for more than ten years. Over that time, Yoshida went from an employee of PlayStation to its most public face, as he regularly appeared in Sony-produced videos, presented showcases at E3, and maintained a public presence on social media, where he was responsive to PlayStation fans. That’s especially true of the PlayStation 4 era, when Yoshida brought a friendly and lighthearted image to PlayStation. Maybe the most famous example of that is the time he poked fun at the idea that players would soon be prevented from sharing physical games by appearing in a video demonstrating PlayStation’s own sharing method — just handing the disc to a friend.
Yoshida says the memory that stands out most from his time as president is when Journey won Game of the Year at the DICE Awards. The seminal indie game was only available digitally through PlayStation Network, but still managed to beat out much larger games for the award.
“The creator Jenova Chen did a talk at the summit, and he talked about a letter he received from a girl who lost her father and she thought about her father and she was able to move on in her life,” Yoshida sys. “The whole audience stood up and the whole room was filled with happiness and an amazing feeling that this small game could have such a big impact on people’s lives.”
With his love of indie games, it’s perhaps no surprise that he went on to lead PlayStation’s Indies Initiative after stepping down as Worldwide Studios president in 2019. Yoshida describes this role as “like a dream job,” since he’d already spent so much time playing and helping to promote indie games during his time as president. It’s hard to imagine any console thriving without indie games now, but when Yoshida became Worldwide Studios president, the indie boom was just beginning. He played a major role in making indies a focus of publishers and console makers.
A long-time advocate of indie games, Yoshida says seeing Journey win DICE’s Game of the Year was a career high point.
More than most gaming executives, Yoshida is a visible, well-liked figure in the industry. The announcement of his departure from PlayStation was unsurprisingly followed by an outpouring of support and appreciation from players and industry figures alike.
“Congrats on an amazing career at PlayStation,” Xbox head Phil Spencer wrote on social media. “You've always been a great advocate for the industry, for creators and for players. I've appreciated the time we've been able to spend talking gaming.”
It’s never a great idea to pin the success of any game or console on a single executive, but Yoshida’s reputation in gaming seems well earned. Far from a faceless leader, he became PlayStation’s most public spokesperson, humanizing the tech company. Yoshida served as executive producer on iconic PlayStation games like Gran Turismo and Ape Escape before going on to help third-party indie studios bring their best work to Sony’s console. Whatever Yoshida does next, his legacy remains as the person who gave PlayStation a human face and made sure indies had an equal seat at the table.
