Shuhei Yoshida spoke in an interview about the gaming industry and the future of video games. He finds it a bit “boring” if all top games consist of service games. At the same time, Sony is precisely focusing on this strategy.
Who is Shuhei Yoshida? The 59-year-old is one of the most well-known faces of the company as the former head of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios. He is now working as the Head of Independent Developer Initiative at Sony and received the “BAFTA Fellowship” award in March 2023 for his work.
In an interview with the British newspaper “The Guardian”, Shuhei Yoshida talked about his career and the current situation in the industry. He also discussed current developments in the industry.
Sony is currently focusing on advertising in a news style. This has also caused some confusion. This is one of their spots:
Yoshida hopes for creative, new ideas
Shuhei Yoshida speaks with The Guardian about receiving the BAFTA in March 2023 and provides insights into his work and current developments in the gaming industry.
He also looks into the future but wishes above all for creative and diverse ideas. However, he finds one trend a bit monotonous if it dominates the top ranks in gaming:
It is about so-called service games, which are usually designed as multiplayer games to retain players over a longer period through ever-new content.
“The industry is growing and growing, and I hope it continues to support and promote creative ideas and people working on new things. You don’t want the top 10 games every year to be almost identical and for all games to become service games… That would be a bit boring for me.”
Shuhei Yoshida via The Guardian
What are Sony’s plans? In fact, Sony wants to increasingly focus on the games that Shuhei Yoshida hopes will bring some creative variety. According to the US site Axios, Sony’s developer studios are currently working on 12 such titles.
We already have more information on 7 of them and know that brand new franchises are among them:
What else does he say about the future of gaming? Shuhei Yoshida also sees potential in AI tools for making game development more accessible to more people while simultaneously reducing the costs of game production.
He shares: “I just looked at 15 pitches this morning in a competition for Indies in Japan, and one of them had incredibly beautiful graphics created by a small team of students.”
For the creation of the graphics, they used Midjourney, an AI capable of generating images.
“It’s very impressive that a small number of young people can create an amazingly good-looking game. In the future, AI could develop interesting animations and behaviors and even take over debugging for your program.”
When asked what he thinks about developers’ fears that AI might replace people in the field, he remains calm: After all, you still need someone who can operate the tool, and human creativity is more important than AI.
Here you can find more on the topic: AI Midjourney excites the internet with images on demand – set to radically change how games are developed
