Shuhei Yoshida Retiring from Sony

The legendary Shuhei Yoshida, currently the Head of Indies Initiative at Sony Interactive, is officially retiring from Sony in January next year. Yoshida announced his retirement in a PlayStation blog post November 26th titled “All Good Things: A look back at Shuhei Yoshida’s 31 years with PlayStation.”

Okay real quick, I can’t imagine being with a company for 31 years. That’s three decades. I can’t even stay with a specific hairstyle or hair color for half as long. 31 years is as long as I’ve been alive. That is incredible.

Anyways, sorry, back to it. Yoshida stated he’d be leaving Sony January 15, 2025. As to why he’s leaving now and why, Yoshida said, “I’ve been with PlayStation from the beginning, and this is my 31st year with PlayStation. And when I hit 30 years, I was thinking, hmm, it may be about time for me to move on. You know, the company’s been doing great.

I love PS5, I love the games that are coming out on this platform. And we have new generations of management who I respect and admire. And I’m so excited for the future of PlayStation. 

So you know, PlayStation is in really good hands. I thought, okay, this is my time.”

Yoshida joined Ken Kutanagi’s team in 1993 when they were developing the first PlayStation and the team was composed of only engineers. Yoshida was the first non-technical person to join and that sparked the beginning of his journey. 

Yoshida remarked on how when he had joined, their company was really just a department until Kutanagi’s team merged with another team working under Sony Music Entertainment Japan to make games for PlayStation. Thus, Sony Computer Entertainment was born in November 1993.

The whole team was only made up of 80 people at that time. 

A really sweet story Yoshida told in the PlayStation blog was about his favorite moment during his time at PlayStation which was at the DICE Awards. He spoke on how PlayStation would get Game of the Year nominations but that there was a particular nomination and win that really touched him.

Yoshica said, “However, among all of these times, one time stood out for me in my memory as something really, really special was when Journey got the Game of the Year Award. Journey was distributed through PlayStation Network.

It was a digital-only, small game. You can finish playing the game within like three hours.

But that game…[won] Game of the Year against all these AAA titles, I think for the first time in the industry….the creator Jenova Chen did a talk at the summit, and he talked about a letter he received from a girl who lost her father and she thought about her father and she was able to move on in her life.

The whole audience stood up and the whole room was filled with happiness and an amazing feeling that this small game could have such a big impact on people’s lives.”

If you’re feeling sad about Yoshida’s exit from Sony, don’t worry, he still plans to stay in the industry and isn’t retiring just yet. Well, at least based on his reply to a fan on Twitter. Yoshida didn’t specify where he would be going or how he planned to stay in the industry yet, but he may have more to say after January 15th next year.