Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida is the man responsible for bolstering PS3 and PS Vita with exclusive video games – from PlayStation All-Stars to Beyond. MCV Pacific editor Leigh Harris sat down with the worldwide studios president to discuss creating new IP, Vita’s E3 showing and extending the console lifecycle
How important is it for Sony to push unproven concepts? From the day we started working on PSone, we had a culture of trying new things and really supporting people who have good, big ideas – whether or not they have been proven. This is because we were a newcomer to the gaming industry. There were other big companies like Nintendo and Sega who’d been making games for a long time, but because we were new, these types of big ideas being supported meant that many more creative people could participate in making entertainment with us.
That’s why we called our company
Sony Computer Entertainment, not Sony Games. We’ve always continued with that culture, and when we meet people like David Cage or the team at Media Molecule who have a very good – if unconventional – idea, and when we believe in their vision, it’s just natural for us to support it. I think that in turn creates what PlayStation is today.
How does the cross-pollination of PS3, Vita and Mobile fit into Sony’s larger vision? Is it a part of a push to get a larger base of developers on Sony platforms generally? In simple terms, yes. Bearing in mind it’s been only four months since we launched PS Vita, I’m very happy with how the Vita has come out. We’ve worked really closely with the hardware group over the last few years to discuss what devices and capabilities would make sense. We wanted to create the idea of a portable gaming system with our hardware group that we also wanted as a game development group. Four months later, we’re still working hard
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to realise the potential and vision our hardware team created with Vita. One example is that we’re able to announce PSone classics support with the next firmware update. Other examples are how we use PS3 and
PlayStation Vita is nothing like any other system. So anything that comes to it, to me, is an exclusive. Shuhei Yoshida, Sony
PS Vita together. We’re working on new titles like SoundShapes– where you can create your own songs – that is also an action platformer. You can share your creations in that game with other people who are playing games on PS Vita or PS3. We’re trying to show consumers, industry and development teams what it is that they can do using PS Vita as a platform in conjunction with PS3. In my mind, we’re still at the starting phase of realising and showing the potential of Vita. PS Mobile is a larger