Former PlayStation govt Shuhei Yoshida claims he was “fired” from his role as SIE Worldwide Studios president because he didn’t listen to then-CEO Jim Ryan.
The widespread govt quit Sony last year after 31 years on the firm, the place he helped launch the unique PlayStation, and served as its president of SIE Worldwide Studios between 2008 and 2019.
In 2019 it was introduced that Yoshida had stepped right down to work on a brand new initiative specializing in constructing relationships with indie builders, with Hermen Hulst changing him as president.
Since then, nevertheless, Yoshida has said various occasions that it wasn’t his choice to step down as president, and that whereas he loved his new role working with indie studios, he needed to take it or depart PlayStation altogether.
Yoshida’s newest feedback got here when he attended the Alt:Games competition in Australia this previous weekend, the place he was giving a chat on Sunday about what makes an indie sport profitable when he reportedly made the feedback.
As reported by This Week in Video Games, Yoshida listed a few of his achievements as Worldwide Studios president, then claimed he was fired for not agreeing to do sure issues (which he didn’t specify) for Ryan.
“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 reportedly stated. “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 the first-party development, I was fired from the role. Jim Ryan wanted to remove me from first-party because I didn’t listen to him. He asked to do some ridiculous things, and I said ‘no’.”
The report states that Yoshida stated this in a jovial method, resulting in laugher from the viewers, however this isn’t the primary time Yoshida has mentioned his removing from the SIE Worldwide Studios president role.
Last yr, a month after he left Sony, Yoshida said that he was didn’t select to step down in 2019 and was as a substitute pressured to take the brand new indies role, because the choice would have been leaving PlayStation altogether.
“Moving from first-party to indies? Well, I had no choice,” Yoshida defined to VentureBeat in February 2025. “When Jim asked me to do the indie job, the choice was to do that or leave the company. But I felt very strongly about the state of PlayStation and indies. I really wanted to do this. I believed I could do something unique for that purpose.”
Yoshida additionally informed Kinda Funny final yr that if he had nonetheless been Worldwide Studios president he would have resisted the corporate’s push for dwell service video games, joking: “If I was in Hermen [Hulst’s] position, probably I would’ve tried to resist that direction – maybe that’s one of the reasons they removed me from the first-party.”
