It’s not often that one gets to sit down with the head of a major studio. It’s even less often that one gets to sit down with the head of Sony’s Worldwide Studio. Luckily, someone did. (Unluckily that person wasn’t me.)
Fortunately with the power of the Internet at my disposal I can easily direct you to not only ThreeSpeach, the ‘semi-official’ PlayStation blog, but also their interview with Shuhei Yoshida (the aforementioned head of Worldwide Studios).
Since the interview questions are being asked by someone who is quite literally on the Sony payroll they are more on the mild side. It’s more of a ‘getting to know the guy who replaced Phil Harrison’ piece than anything else but there are a few interesting bits hidden behind the fluff.
Mr. Yoshida talks about why there are fewer third party exclusives on his and all systems, "I think that’s pure economic pressure, pushing most of the third parties to move from some exclusive titles to more multi-platform titles. Because we know that is the trend, we, as a company, can invest in our first-party studios; in terms of exclusive titles, our role becomes more important."
He also talks about using the power of the PS3 in a non-graphics sense. "So, many games have focused on the graphics side, and it’s often the case when a new platform comes out that the gameplay kind of goes back. But now, in the second and third years of the platform, we will start to see something really unique and interesting."
Interesting and unique gameplay for the platform? Does he know something that we don’t? Probably. If this wasn’t coming directly from what is essentially a PR outlet I would expect a follow up question along the lines of "can you share an example of a game?" It makes me more interested to see what Sony shows at E3 this year, as I consider myself a gameplay over graphics man.
