In Brief:
- Shuhei Yoshida, previously head of Sony Worldwide Studios for 11 years, has remarked that he was “fired” from the role by then-CEO Jim Ryan, “because I didn’t listen to him.”
- Yoshida suggested Ryan “asked to do some ridiculous things, and I said ‘No,'” before saying that he highly enjoyed the role Ryan offered him as Head of PlayStation Indies
- Yoshida was speaking at Australian games festival ALT: GAMES, sharing perspective on what he believes makes a successful indie game
Shuhei Yoshida, the former head of Sony Worldwide Studios (the division now known as PlayStation Studios) has remarked that he was “fired” from the role by then-CEO Jim Ryan, “because I didn’t listen to him.”
Speaking at the 2026 edition of Australian games festival
ALT: GAMES, the 31-year PlayStation veteran introduced himself by recounting his long career, including his transition from leading PlayStation’s first-party studio efforts for over a decade to becoming the company’s indie game evangelist as Head of PlayStation Indies.
“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,” he said, describing his work during the 2000s. “
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 said jovially, prompting laughter from the audience. “He asked to do some ridiculous things, and I said ‘No.'”
When Guerilla Games co-founder Hermen Hulst was
announced the new Head of Worldwide Studios, Sony was vague about the terms of the transition, simply saying that “Yoshida will leave his current position as President, WWS, to become head of a newly formed initiative that will focus on nurturing external independent creators.”
Jim Ryan, who joined Sony Computer Entertainment in 1994, served as CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) from 2019 to 2024.
During Ryan’s tenure, SIE moved into film and television production, reorganised Sony Worldwide Studios into PlayStation Studios, acquired Insomniac Games, Housemarque, Nixxes, Bluepoint Games, Haven Studios, and Bungie, and made a concerted effort to publish games on PC and develop live-service titles, at one point targeting
12 new live-service releases by 2025.
“Because I grew up with Jim from the PS1 days… you don’t want to have one of your friends as one of your subordinates.” Yoshida remarked.
However, Ryan offered Yoshida the role to focus on improving PlayStation’s support for indie development, “because everybody in the company knew how much I loved indie games.”
“I
really enjoyed the role of promoting and evangelizing indie games,” he emphasised.
Yoshida eventually
left PlayStation in January 2025 after 31 years with the company and formed his own indie game consulting firm, Yosp Inc.
As he describes it, “I was helping indie publishers and developers at Sony for the last five years, so I feel like I’m continuing to do the same kind of thing, but now I am freelance.”
“I’m free to show up in any podcast. Now I can talk about Nintendo, Xbox, Steam,” he said, to more audience laughter. “And I get to see how Nintendo and Xbox support indies. So it’s very, very cool.”
In the rest of his talk, titled “What Makes an Indie Game Successful?,” Yoshida walked through twelve standout indie games that resonated with him and the reasons why. They included:
Yoshida also used his talk to provide advice for indie developers – “When you follow the trend, you are already too late,” he suggested – and shared stories about his crippling
Marvel Snap addiction.
“The first year, three years ago, I played this game with three accounts because I couldn’t get enough… I used to say during that time that ‘I live in between playing
Marvel Snap.’ So that destroyed me.”
Yoshida says he eventually dropped one
Marvel Snap account per year until weaning himself off the game completely at the end of December 2025. The admission of his effort was met with applause.
