Former PlayStation veteran Shuhei Yoshida has said he was “fired” as president of Sony Worldwide Studios after clashing with then-CEO Jim Ryan.
Yoshida departed his top job overseeing PlayStation’s internal teams — such as Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica, Sucker Punch Productions, Guerrilla Games and Insomniac — back in 2019, when it was announced that he was stepping down to head a new Playstation-backed indie developer initiative.
In the years since, Yoshida has claimed that he was asked by Ryan to “do the indie job” or “leave the company” — something he eventually did do, though not until 2025. Now, Yoshida has revealed more about what led to that job change — effectively a demotion — which he has blamed on having disagreed with Ryan over “some ridiculous things.”
“I helped Santa Monica to make God of War, Naughty Dog to make Uncharted and The Last of Us, and Sucker Punch to make the beautiful Ghost of Tsushima,” Yoshida said during a talk at the Alt: Games convention, via This Week in Video Games. “Ghost of Tsushima was one of the last games that I worked on as the president of Worldwide Studios.
“But in 2019, after 11 years leading the first-party development, I was fired from the role,” Yoshida continued. “Jim Ryan wanted to remove me from first-party because I didn’t listen to him. He asked to do some ridiculous things, and I said ‘No.'”
Unfortunately, Yoshida did not elaborate further on what these “ridiculous” things were that Ryan had asked him to do. IGN has contacted Sony for more.
Ryan served as CEO of PlayStation from 2019 to 2024, after which point he departed the company, and seemingly retired from video games for good. His tenure saw PlayStation counter Xbox’s own developer spending spree with the acquisition of companies such as Spider-Man maker Insomniac Games and Destiny developer Bungie, among others, and also a notable push into the development of live-service games. The results of these initiatives were mixed, with some newly-acquired studios now closed (Bluepoint Games) or still yet to ship a game (Haven Studios), while many live-service projects have been canceled.
Yoshida, meanwhile, now runs his own indie game consultancy firm. “I’m free to show up in any podcast,” he said. “Now I can talk about Nintendo, Xbox, Steam. And I get to see how Nintendo and Xbox support indies. So it’s very, very cool.”
Image credit: Scott Garfitt/BAFTA via Getty Images.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
