Shuhei Yoshida Wants to Change the Way Indie Developers Perceive PlayStation | Push Square

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Shuhei Yoshida is a decades-long video game industry veteran, serving as president of SIE Worldwide Studios through a crucial era in PlayStation history and occupying a special place of affection in the hearts of legions of fans. He was honoured with a BAFTA fellowship for his many achievements within and promotion of the gaming industry.

He currently serves as head of Sony's Independent Developer Initiative, supporting indie devs as they bring their projects to life by making partnership and marketing deals a reality. But there is a perception that the PS5 is not as welcoming of an environment for indies as previous generations, something that we have written about at length previously.

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Yoshida discussed the challenges involved in getting the message out and what he hopes to achieve in the future, stating: «We’re trying to change the perceptions of the challenge of developing and publishing games on PlayStation. It's a communication challenge we've been working on.»

This is being accomplished through something of a PR blitz, which Yoshida describes: “We’ve been doing conference tours, going to events and doing talks and keynotes and things like that to send the message that we're open for developers to bring their games to PlayStation."

The biggest issue indie developers face is discoverability, which Yoshida acknowledges, noting: “There are so many great quality games that no one knows about. The challenge to get funded has always existed, but there's more and more money coming into the industry all the time. Digital storefronts can have unlimited numbers of games because they're digital, but there's only so much space at the front of the storefront."

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