PlayStation-legenden Shuhei Yoshida tilbragte sidste weekend i Bilbao ved den store BIG-konference, hvor han desuden modtog en ærespris for sit bidrag til spilbranchen igennem adskillige årtier.
Gamereactor var blandt mediepartnerne, og havde mulighed for at høre hans udlægning af PlayStation-konsollens helt tidlige dage, dage hvor det skulle vise sig at eksklusiver fra tredjeparter var essentielle for den første konsols succes.
Han fortalte dog først hvor svært det var at bryde ind på konsolmarkedet dengang, og mange udviklere sagde noget i stil med; "come back when you've sold a million":
"First negotiations to bring more games to the system weren't very hopeful. The machine was barely a concept and with the generation shift every actor was trying to "understand how real-time 3D graphics worked".
Men blandt andet grundet Final Fantasy og Dragon Quest, der var platformeksklusiver, så endte det med at vende:
"I was in the third party relations department and we helped to convince SquareSoft... at that time SquareSoft and Enix were separate companies, and Square had the Final Fantasy franchise, and Enix had the Dragon Quest franchise, and these two RPGs are the biggest IPs in Japan. And, you know, they were talking behind the scenes [things] that I cannot tell, but both of them committed to bring their new games to PlayStation. And that totally changed the fortune for us. And finally we had the games that we needed to make PlayStation successful".
Resten er historie.