Sony’s Yoshida on the Need To Push the Art of Making AAA Games and the Uselessness of Half-Baked Modes

Alessio Palumbo
Shuhei Yoshida

Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, is set to receive the Develop Legend Award at this year’s Develop Awards (Brighton, UK, July 11th).

Speaking to MCVUK as part of an interview ahead of the event, Yoshida outlined the hurdles big, triple-A projects face these days and at the same time remarked the need to keep pushing the art of making these titles.

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On one hand, in the triple-A space, the scale and the tech of game development has grown so much that I feel like we are making a huge bet every time we start a new project. The end results are, when successfully executed, an amazing fusion of art and tech, providing hours and hours of highly engaging interactive entertainment in a big, often open, world to explore with lifelike characters and imaginative creatures.

Because of the size of the investment, each title feels too big to fail. It creates an enormous pressure to manage these triple-A projects. These games are the drivers of the industry to become more and more mainstream entertainment. We need to keep pushing the art of making triple-A games.

Yoshida also added that doing half-baked single player or multiplayer modes is useless these days and that's why smart developers and publishers generally focus on making one of those right.

It is extremely challenging to create a successful single player game or a successful live multiplayer game these days. The art of making each type of game has progressed so much that devs tend to pick and choose where their strength lies and where they should put their focus. It does not help to attach a half-baked online mode to a single player game, or vice versa. I think it is a result of rational thinking on the side of devs and publishers.

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