Shuhei Yoshida fremstår som en af de mere vellidte skikkelser blandt PlayStation-afdelingens mange leder igennem de seneste årtier. Han tilbragte 38 år hos Sony, og endte i sidste ende med at blive president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, hvor han overså udviklingen af utal af spændende eksklusiver, kommunikerede med studier og meget, meget mere.
Men tilbage i 2019 tog han stillingen som head of PlayStation Indies, som mange kløede sig i hovedbunden over, men det viser sig nu at denne stilling var et slags ultimatum til Yoshida, og alternativet var at forlade PlayStation helt.
"There was no choice. It was either take the position or leave the company. For the last five years my responsibility was to promote indie games inside and outside of PlayStation. I wanted to communicate, especially to new people joining PlayStation, how important it is to support indie games. They create the future. Externally I was communicating to indie developers and publishers that we wanted to make things better for them. Bit by bit, we've been able to improve our systems, our store functions, our communication. A few years back, one of the reasons I got that job from Jim-we'd been criticized by the indie community. They said that PlayStation doesn't care about indies. You don't hear that kind of criticism anymore. Last year we had lots of anecdotes from our indie partners that their new games were selling better on PlayStation than any other platform. That's amazing. Some games sold better on PlayStation than on PC. When I started that work five years ago, our indie partners would say that when they released their games multiplatform, the Switch version would sell three to five times more than PlayStation. Bit by bit, that gap has narrowed down. We have a strong team inside the company supporting indies."
Han forlod PlayStation den 15. januar. Tror du han var en god indflydelse på virksomheden?