Former PlayStation veteran Shuhei Yoshida has stated he was “fired” as president of Sony Worldwide Studios after clashing with then-CEO Jim Ryan.
Yoshida departed his prime job overseeing PlayStation’s inner groups — similar to Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica, Sucker Punch Productions, Guerrilla Games and Insomniac — again in 2019, when it was introduced that he was stepping down to move a brand new Playstation-backed indie developer initiative.
In the years since, Yoshida has claimed that he was requested by Ryan to “do the indie job” or “leave the company” — one thing he finally did do, although not till 2025. Now, Yoshida has revealed extra about what led to that job change — successfully a demotion — which he has blamed on having disagreed with Ryan over “some ridiculous things.”
“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,” Yoshida stated throughout a chat on the Alt: Games conference, through This Week in Video Games. “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 main the first-party growth, I used to be fired from the function,” Yoshida continued. “Jim Ryan needed to take away me from first-party as a result of I did not take heed to him. He requested to do some ridiculous issues, and I stated ‘No.'”
Unfortunately, Yoshida did not elaborate further on what these “ridiculous” things were that Ryan had asked him to do. IGN has contacted Sony for more.
Ryan served as CEO of PlayStation from 2019 to 2024, after which point he departed the company, and seemingly retired from video games for good. His tenure saw PlayStation counter Xbox’s own developer spending spree with the acquisition of companies such as Spider-Man maker Insomniac Games and Destiny developer Bungie, among others, and also a notable push into the development of live-service games. The results of these initiatives were mixed, with some newly-acquired studios now closed (Bluepoint Games) or still yet to ship a game (Haven Studios), while many live-service projects have been canceled.
Yoshida, meanwhile, now runs his own indie game consultancy firm. “I’m free to point out up in any podcast,” he said. “Now I can speak about Nintendo, Xbox, Steam. And I get to see how Nintendo and Xbox help indies. So it’s very, very cool.”
Image credit: Scott Garfitt/BAFTA via Getty Images.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can attain Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or discover him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
