Shuhei Yoshida, one of the key veterans behind the PlayStation brand, has announced his retirement from Sony after more than three decades with the company.
Yoshida announced the news in a PlayStation blog/podcast on Tuesday. His exit will be effective on January 15, 2025.
“I’ve been with PlayStation from the beginning, and this is my 31st year with PlayStation,” Yoshida said. “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.”
Yoshida is currently Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Head of Indies Initiative, although he’s held various posts at the company throughout the years. Most notably, he was President of SIE Worldwide Studios for Sony Interactive Entertainment from 2008 to 2019.
But as Yoshida himself notes, his roots with the PlayStation run deep. He was one of the initial members of Ken Kutaragi’s (often referred to as “the father of PlayStation”) team in 1993 and, as he says on the podcast, “was the first non-technical person to join the team as the company, Sony Corporation at the time, started to plan to bring PlayStation to market.”
Elaborating further, he explained that his job, as a lead in account management, was “to talk to publishers and developers in Japan” in the hopes that they would make games on the PlayStation. “So that was a really fun time, but also a really challenging time because not many people in the industry believed in 3D graphics technology at that time,” he went on.
“When I hit 30 years, I was thinking, hmm, it may be about time for me to move on.”
Yoshida would go on to become Vice President at Sony Computer Entertainment America in April 2000, being named Senior Vice President at SCE Worldwide Studios USA in 2007 before taking his President role in 2008. He calls his most recent job, however, overseeing indies at SIE, “a dream job”: “When I was managing [PlayStation Studios] working with big studios, making AAA games was great,” he explained. “However, when I went to events like E3 or Gamescom, I always went to the indie game area.”
While Yoshida didn’t specify what exactly he’ll be doing next, he did say in a reply to a fan on X/Twitter that he’d like to stay in the industry.
Yoshida’s exit is only the latest PlayStation news that’s dropped amid its 30th anniversary; earlier on Tuesday, Sony confirmed that the PlayStation 2 sold 160 million units across its lifetime.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
