Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has become quite prolific in talking about the games industry since his official departure from Sony earlier this year. In a recent appearance on the Kit & Krysta YouTube channel – a channel run by former employees of Nintendo of America’s PR department – Yoshida has spoken about ballooning game development budgets, and how this means we get fewer game releases.
Speaking to Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang, Yoshida spoke about how big-budget game development “was safer” during the PS4 console generation. During the time, he noted that Sony was releasing fewer and fewer small, experimental titles like Patapon. Rather, the studio was focused on its big-budget narrative single-player games like God of War.
“It may be counterintuitive but, you know, if we spent enough money to make the big game you know the chance of success felt increased because everybody wanted to play bigger games [with] more beautiful graphics and more realistic-looking characters, more gameplay hours,” said Yoshida.
The major downside of this strategy, however, is that fewer and fewer games are greenlit since the budget is often tied up in another big sequel or other blockbuster title. He also spoke about how budgets have risen over the years, noting that games made during the PS4 generation and the PS5 generations have been quite a bit more expensive than previous console generations.
“I saw some analysis or estimate of one same franchise released during PS4 era and PS5 era generation double the budget, and that has reached… the point that we cannot recoup this investment,” said Yoshida. “So this generation, PS5 generation, I think is the first time that the industry really, truly believes that you know there has to be something that has to be done.”
In the past, Yoshida has also expressed his beliefs about how much value games can offer, and how, for example, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 served as a good example of a title that offered a good balance between price, production costs, and how much value it offered players.
“In any case, a balance must be found between production costs and game prices,” Yoshida said. “GTA 6 will obviously be a case in point, but if you take the example of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the game is just as phenomenal visually, despite the fact that the team only has around thirty people. This is one of the ways forward, I think, because you can make excellent games with tighter teams and budgets without compromising quality.”
Since his departure from Sony, Yoshida has also revealed his thoughts about some other aspects of the modern game development industry, like the challenges offered by The Duskbloods for developer FromSoftware, to stories about his time from way back, such as when he played an early prototype of the original Gran Turismo and couldn’t find it fun because it was “too advanced”.
Yoshida has also revealed that he got to play an early build of Ghosts of Yōtei, noting that it “always felt great” to play.