posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
1st non-engineer on PS team later headed SIE Worldwide Studios, Indies Initiative
Shūhei Yoshida, the Head of Indies Initiative at PlayStation‘s Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), announced on an episode of the official PlayStation Podcast on Tuesday that he is leaving SIE on January 15.
Yoshida said that he would like to remain in the game industry, possibly to help indie developers.
Yoshida was part of the PlayStation project since 1993, before the first PSX console was released. As the first non-engineer on the team, he worked as a lead account executive in its third-party licensing program. In this role, he negotiated with game publishers and developers to release games for the then-nascent PlayStation console. During the life of the PSX console, he is credited as producer and executive producer on various first-party titles published by Sony Computer Entertainment (SIE’s earlier name), such as Gran Turismo, Ape Escape, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, and The Legend of Dragoon.
Yoshida later became the Vice President at Sony Computer Entertainment America in 2000, and in 2007 became Senior Vice President at SCE Worldwide Studios USA. In 2008, two years into the life of the PlayStation 3, he became President of SCE Worldwide Studios, a position he would hold for 11 years until he stepped down in 2019, late in the PlayStation 4’s life. He then became Head of Indies Initiative at SIE.
