Sony Games Studios Head Praise for Nintendo

Shuhei Yoshida, the gentleman who took over from Phil Harrison as president of Sony Worldwide Studios has been speaking to the UK's Develop magazine. For some inexplicable reason no one at Sony HQ has told him that when giving interviews you really should take a pop at the opposition in between talking in platitudes and retaining plausible deniability. Yoshida appears to want to talk positively about the industry and be open about why games have been canned.

Here's his opinion on the state of the three platform holders, "Yes, in my mind Nintendo and Sony and Microsoft are conspiring to really expand the market together. It didn’t work that way in the prior generation because all three companies tried to get the same market".

He polishes this outrageous statement of, well, reason with this astonishingly giving act of giving credit where it's due, "Nintendo made a very good choice for all of us to go for a completely different direction and bring new users into the industry". Whatever next?!

Of course, it can't be all sweetness and light. While Nintendo has opened the market, the Wii is more of a 'jumping off point', says Yoshida, "But there are also new users coming into the space – many of them choose Nintendo Wii for the first platform as it is easy and fun, but when they have fun, some of them will think ‘Perhaps there is something more out there I can play".

So, what of the game canning? Develop asks whether the deaths of Eight Days and The Getaway were down to them being single-player outings. Yoshida responds, "If I am truly honest that was part of the consideration. As I say, there are many projects we want to do and we look at many different angles for them, such as profitability, how long it may take, and where it fits in the portfolio – along with other strategic aspects that we are trying to delivery for the platform. So it was just one of the issues."

We wonder if this new more reasoned approach is Yoshida's own character coming through - thank goodness - or is a Sony corporate strategy? The future will tell.
You can read the full interview over at Develop.