Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida would have "tried to resist" company’s current live service strategy

Shuhei Yoshida, a longtime PlayStation executive who left Sony earlier this month, has revealed that he would have “tried to resist” a push for live service titles had he still been the company’s president at the time.

The details:

• In an interview with Kinda Funny, Yoshida was asked about PlayStation's ongoing push to focus on live service titles, such as the ill-fated Concord, since he stepped down as president in 2019. The former executive admitted that if the strategy had been presented at the time, he would have pushed back against the company's management, and joked that it could have contributed to his resignation.

• Yoshida explained that part of his job involved managing the company's budget and determining where resources would be allocated during a period when it would be counterproductive to shift away from safer single-player franchises such as God of War. However, when current co-CEO Hermen Hulst was appointed president, Sony provided "a lot more resources," allowing PlayStation to develop more live service games alongside its existing IPs.

• While acknowledging that the strategy is "risky," the executive believes that the way it has been handled so far has been "great." “Luckily, Helldivers 2 did so well… nobody expected that,” he said. “So you can’t plan a success in this industry, that’s the most fun part of this business. I hope that this strategy will work in the end. “

• PlayStation announced plans to release 12 live service games by the end of March 2026, but half of them were later delayed or cancelled, including a multiplayer The Last of Us title and a fantasy co-op game from the now-defunct London Studio. While hero shooter Concord was pulled offline after only two weeks in September due to poor sales, the strategy's first major success came in May 2024, when Helldivers 2 exploded in popularity, becoming the company's fastest-selling game launch ever.

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• Nintendo has omitted Retro Studios from the credits of Donkey Kong Country Returns HD despite the studio having developed the original Wii version.