Sony has a new guru in charge of all in-house games development. Luxuriating in the job title of President, Worldwide Studios, his name is Shuhei Yoshida, and we were there, at Sony’s London Studio, when he first faced the press in the UK. We decide to quiz him about where he sees Sony’s in-house development for the PlayStation 3 going, his background and where the UK stands in Sony’s general development scheme of things. A personable, impeccably polite chap with a fine grasp of English, he has been a PlayStation man since the earliest possible days. So read on…

Shuhei Yoshida’s roots

Q: Tell us about your background: you’ve been based in the US, haven’t you?

Shuhei Yoshida: Yes, for the past eight years, and I’m still based there now. But I joined the PlayStation project in February 1993. At that time, Ken Kutaragi’s team was purely an engineering team, and I was there as a non-technical person, to help them develop business plans and software strategies for the team. My first job with them was to help them convince Sony to make the investment and start the business. So, that was successful and the company was established in the November of that year. At that time, I was assigned to be the manager of the third-party relations group, working with Namco, Konami and Capcom.

I moved to game development in 1996, and managed our internal studio in Japan for four years. When I moved to product development, there was only one team making games for SCEI – Kazunori Yamauchi’s team. They were finishing their second game, Motor Toon Grand Prix 2, and working on a prototype of Gran Turismo. I helped them finish the game, the game was very successful and they became an independent studio. I helped people to form new teams, which made games like Ape Escape and Ico. I moved to become the head of the US development group in 2000 and held that position until last month.

Q: Now you’re stepping into a large pair of shoes vacated by Phil Harrison. What are your first impressions of the job, and what directions are you looking to take?

SY: I’ve known Phil since 1994, when he became the official evangelist for the PlayStation project. I’ve always been impressed with how good he is at articulating very technical things to non-technical people. Then he moved to product development in Europe, and we were peers – I was running the group in the US and he was running the group in Europe, and we met regularly. So when he became President, Worldwide Studios in 2005 and became my boss, he asked me not to just run the US group, but to participate as a part of Worldwide Studios management — to form and lead the strategy for the entire group. Phil’s departure was unexpected, and we miss him, but as far as where we are going, we have so many things we are already working on, so I just continue that drive.

Shuhei Yoshida on collaboration between Sony’s many internal development teams

Q: When I visited the London Studio recently, everyone was keen to stress that there is a new spirit of collaboration between Sony’s in-house development teams.

SY: That was one of the key initiatives that Phil and I worked on. Before, we were part of each regional organization of Sony Computer Entertainment, so we were a little bit at arms’ length, and didn’t necessarily share information from an early stage. But after Worldwide Studios was formed, we have been sharing our technology and developing a common infrastructure. After two and a half years, the distance between the London Studio and Foster City in the US might as well be as close as the distance between London and Liverpool. I may be exaggerating, but we feel as if that is already happening.

Q: You have shelved the development of Eight Days and The Getaway: what was the thinking behind that?

SY: People were doing the right things on the projects, and there were things in the games that were working really well, but the projects were coming to the end of the pre-production stage, and that is the time when we evaluate every product. Because after that, we would assign more resources to them, and they would really become major investments. This is a regular appraisal process for every project. We do evaluate and cancel projects all the time, because we do start more projects than we finish, and if we finished the same number of projects that we started, that would mean we were not taking any risks at all, and that wouldn’t move our industry on any further.

There are many new ideas that sound very interesting, but we don’t know whether they would really work, or how much it would take to accomplish our vision – that’s why we use the early pre-production stage to try new ideas and measure how much it would take to develop the product. With all that understanding, and with all the other projects that are going on – perhaps other projects are at the same stage and demanding lots of resources from many fronts, because we support many platforms in PS3, PSP, PS2 and PSN – there are more things we want to do than we can, given the number of people and resources. So, it was not like Eight Days was in jeopardy: it was making progress. But it was more about business situations and priorities.

Shuhei Yoshida on exclusive PS3 games

Q: I’m wondering about Sony’s policy regarding exclusive PS3 games – it leans more towards internal development rather than paying third parties for exclusives. Are you re-evaluating that policy?

SY: My role is to run first-party development, and we are always exclusive. Because, in this generation, it costs much more to develop one product, it’s just natural for third-party publishers trying to recoup the investment from multiple platforms. I think that’s pure economic pressure, pushing most of the third parties to move from some exclusive titles to more multi-platform titles. Because we know that is the trend, we, as a company, can invest in our first-party studios; in terms of exclusive titles, our role becomes more important.

As far as I can see, with major publishers like Activision and EA, their major titles will be day-and-date with the Xbox 360 and their quality will be really good. And some of the titles, I expect, will have something extra because of the PS3’s abilities and the space on the Blu-ray format.

Shuhei Yoshida on the top PS3 titles

Q: What, for you, are the key PS3 titles in development at the moment?

SY: The title I’m most excited about is LittleBigPlanet, because it has so many things to offer to consumers. And that, I hope, will become a major step forward for the whole industry, regarding how we will empower consumers and get them creating.

Q: How important is Home? Will it be ready for this Christmas?

SY: We certainly hope so – every indication is positive. With the timing of the launch, we’ve always set target dates, such as the end of last year or spring of this year, but our problem is always implementing features, testing with beta users, getting feedback and making modifications. When we become confident that it is good enough to make it available to all users, that would be the right time. We have been making good progress, but recently, we have been thinking that this fall is the timing we will work towards.

Shuhei Yoshida on the future direction of Worldwide Studios

SY: I am moving my base from the US to Japan later this year, because one of the roles that I feel myself and Worldwide Studios will play for the future of PlayStation is not only to create games, but to participate in the overall direction-setting of our company and our future platforms. Since Kaz Hirai took over Ken Kutaragi’s position, he has been pushing and inviting us and regional headquarters people to the core strategic discussions. Our tech people in Worldwide Studios are in constant meetings with tech people in Tokyo on the hardware side. So I feel I have to be in Tokyo – to participate in the top management group of SCEI and really achieve the vision that Kaz has in terms of how this company should work going forward.

Shuhei Yoshida on what PS3 games will be like in the future.

Q: Do you feel that there is a lot more to come from games on the PS3, in terms of truly exploiting all its power?

SY: Yes. This is a time when we feel more comfortable with the technology, so we can focus more on the actual game development. I think that’s the same for the major developers and third parties. So, many games have focused on the graphics side, and it’s often the case when a new platform comes out that the gameplay kind of goes back. But now, in the second and third years of the platform, we will start to see something really unique and interesting.

Q: Sony has said that the PS3 can have a longer life-cycle than previous consoles because of its power. Is that something you agree with?

SY: Yes, I do agree. But we can’t say it will have a longer life than other platforms, because we don’t know what their intentions are. PlayStation 2 is still doing very well in its eighth or ninth year. And what we are saying is that, because of what is included in the PS3, our intent is to make it a really relevant system for another ten years. And if it’s longer than other companies’ strategy, that’s up to them to decide.