VG247: Just don’t expect “triple-A development of games” on the handheld, Sony’s European boss tells VG247.
Longtime PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida reveals in a recent interview that he was given an ultimatum by Jim Ryan to either manage indie games or leave the company.
What the actual f***
Why would he do something like this, especially to him of all people
The PS5 might be doing well and the sales are high but in terms of structure, first party games, consumer friendly practices and the like, Jim Ryan really screwed PlayStation this gen.
Yeah I feel like Yoshida san has been one of Playstations greatest assets for a long time. He actually plays and likes games for starters. I think from memory he was also the one that got Stellar Blade on board.
People kept saying this wasn't the case, that Shu loves Indies and wanted that job. Even with all the shit this gen people still make excuses for Sony and refuse to accept reality. This is not the same PS that people grew up with.
This is also true when you consider their mantra from ps3 and part of ps4 was that "we want to support devs in making the games they want to make"
Then the recent articles of turning down Resistance 4, Order 1866 Sequel, Days Gone 2, etc
@Redgrave,
And Wild Arms, Shadow Arts... They also effectively killed off Senran Kagura as well.
I called this one, something seemed off when he "joked" about a demotion on Kinda Funny. Just gotta put the pieces together.
Agree shu was the type of exec you can't buy or learn to be he was genuinely passionate about PlayStation and gaming unlike Jim who just saw dollar signs
That’s what happens when you hire someone who puts needs of the business first and foremost, and completely disregards culture and people.
I’ve seen it too many times working senior management across a couple of companies (AT&T in particular). When we say a bad leader can completely derail and dismantle years of success and happiness in just a few months / a year, BELIEVE IT.
A bad manager only cares about themselves, and a bad leader only cares about the number / their bosses end goal and don’t care how they get there.
That's because Jim Ryan was a power hungry piece of shit and did whatever he could to shift PlayStation away from Japan and into his and western executives' hands. Yoshida-san's visibility and popularity was literally a threat to him, and I've been saying for years that he was intentionally sidelined.
Jim Ryan's departure is the best thing happened to PlayStation in years.
Ps5 is awful this generation. Can't imagine getting in line for a ps6. Eww.... 700 dollar albatross with service fees. Yuk... Especially knowing ps5 will be relevant for st least 4 years into ps6 life cycle. Consoles are such a poor choice.
Jim Ryan is lucky to get a job on the fry line at McDonald's.
Wow, this news confirms what many suspected, which is that Jim Ryan is the one messing shit up. Live Service was without a doubt his doing. Layden also left because of Ryan. Glad that Ryan has been forced out, oops I mean... retired before making it worse.
you're just trying to find a scapegoat. First it was Hermen Hulst, now Jim anything but accept the reality that like any other company makes mistakes eventually and if a company that size allows one person to be the only reason for fuckups, theres more wrong with that company than that 1 guy.
It is literally why those guys get paid the big bucks. And likely why those guys are no longer working at the company now. The leaving the company "over issues he had living in Europe while working in North America" excuse just has never flown with most anyone.
People were blaming Jim a lot longer before Herman, it’s just Jim left so the blame got shifted onto Herman more.
I’m not defending Herman, he has had his part to play but all of this is Jim’s plan, he set things in motion. If Jim made someone like Shawn leave and gave Shu this ultimatum then do you really think Herman has any real say in the top dogs plan?
'if a company that size allows one person to be the only reason for fuckups'
That's what leadership is. 'Leadership' fixes the direction and everyone down the chain says, 'yes'. That's how the military works. It's the same principle. Rocking the boat is frowned upon because everyone has a list of boxes to tick.
If they try and tell the grunts that they are empowered to take action themselves, it's BS just to avoid having an employee go to their manager for support, because the manager is probably clueless and doesn't understand the role anyway. In other words, figure it out for yourself, but rest assured there'll be a witch-hunt if it goes wrong, and while someone will be blamed, root cause will be ignored, cuz who's got time for that when there are boxes to be ticked?
Both are have their hand in it. Putting those guys in position of power is the mistake/fuckup. Herman definitely supports multiplayer/live service as well. I've mentioned in the past that he chased popularity with KZ's multiplayer. Jim obviously has more sway/power given that he forced Shuhei out and butted heads with Layden.
Agreed, PS5 is like doing well in spite of Jim.
PS5’s success is basically down to the good work done prior to this trash, coupled with xbox messing up even more
Former PlayStation boss Jim Ryan has said that the PS5 is "on track" to become SIE's "most successful console ever."
Now he wants to say good things about PS after he laid off a bunch of ppl.
Real classy Jimmy.
Is that the worst you can come up with? Because if I was criticizing Microsoft I could easily list a dozen things only one of which would be the 5000+ people they have fired from their gaming divisions in the past 16 months including everyone who worked on producing physical games.
Let me remind you that PS5 is selling faster than PS4, they just had the hit live service game Helldivers, Spider-Man is still charting, they have already released Granblue Fantasy, Rise of The Ronin, and Final Fantasy Rebirth and Stellar Blade is right around the corner, they also have Silent Hill and two Kojima games in the works. They also have all the big gatcha coming out of Japan, Korea and China lined up for their consoles, which let me remind you that Genshin and Honkai Star Rail made close to a billion dollars last month alone.
They also have PlayStation Portal which is selling as fast as they can make them, and just around the corner they have a 33.5tf console coming out which don't listen to the BS is going to be awesome and supporting it is going to be easy since every game already has two modes so "quality" mode will only need to be unlocked for PS5 Pro's and existing games will be able to easily have PSSR enabled for them.
So yeah, things are looking really good for PlayStation, and the second half of the generation is going to be huge when all the PlayStation developers start releasing their PS5 Pro Enabled games.
"Is that the worst you can come up with?"
I'm. Sorry what? Its called facts. I forgot you love Jim Ryan even if he doesn't know or care about you. None of them do. The sooner you touch grass and grow up the better.
Ok cool so what's the point of saying all that? I know all that.
@Lightning
Except it wasn’t a fact. Ryan has left PlayStation already. The layoffs that we saw with every publisher recently were after Ryan. So nice try.
"Except it wasn’t a fact. Ryan has left PlayStation already. The layoffs that we saw with every publisher recently were after Ryan. So nice try."
That was all Ryan before he left clearly. He stepped down officially a few days ago. He was doing his good byes he even took a picture with the London Studio only to shut them down days later. Don't try and shift blame or change history it was all him.
I thought the layoffs were bad. It's bad when Microsoft does it and when Phil Spenser spoke about it 99% of the comments on this site were about how Xbox sucks. When someone is commenting on how Sony layoff people, you instantly find persons that run to defend Sony. This type of behavior is not good for gaming. Remain consistent in your principles no matter who is doing the wrongdoings. Stop waving your pompoms to one side because these companies don't care about you or their employees.
Omg https://en-as-com.cdn.amppr...
Not even a few days ago just yesterday he left.
Hiroki Totoki is temporarily taking Jim's spot doing Jim's work for 7 months until he was gone April 1 . Now anymore foolish deflection from you ppl?
@divine
Layoffs are bad, but we get these guys with zero credibility, who all of a sudden want to bring up layoffs because an article says something they don’t like. All the while they never bothered when MS did more than twice the layoffs after spending 68 billion to destroy multiplatform segment of gaming. The double standard SHOULD be mentioned.
I just want to see those single player first party games.. i do not like the silence from ww studios
I'm sure you also would say the same thing about Phil Spencer to be logically consistent.
You tell us, he laid of orders of magnitude more people than Sony did, and you remained silent.
Are you guy's defending Jim Ryan just because he was part of playstation?
The guy did nothing good for the industry the entire time he was head of playstation.
It's his bad decision's that got people fired .
@Frost really now? Go find the article and look through the comments and you'll see my comment mocking MS. This isn't about MS though just the usual whataboutism from you.
But cool keep making up more stories it's in your head kiddo.
Funny to see Jim Ryan is suddenly a hero on here now.
Fun fact:
MS laid off 1900 employees from MS studios.
Sony laid off 900 employees from Sony Interactive Studios.
I hope you liked the classy MS after spending 68 BILLION on buying up the industry, then firing people.
I have PS so why would it upset. I'm not a weirdo did Jim Ryan do lay offs or not?
Because you always seem to be upset when PlayStation is going good.
And Ryan retired in September. Sony laid off 900 employees recently. Every other large publisher did as well, including MS which laid off the most developers at 1900.
For the sake of proving your objectivity, please show me any comment you made about how MS showed its class by laying off developers after spending 69 billion on cannabalizing the industry. No joke, did you make any comment like that?
It's your head wanna see fanboy in everyone else because you are one. Not how it works I'm afraid.
Ryan announced his retirement in September. He was still in office Hiroki was training under Ryan hence why we've heard from Hiroki and not Ryan. Ryan officially left yesterday.
That's means Ryan did those lay offs. For God sakes just google it since it's so hard hard for you to understand.
"Sony laid off 900 employees recently. Every other large publisher did as well, including MS which laid off the most developers at 1900."
Yeah... No duh...
Wait class? MS showed no class they were candid about the lay offs and their strategy. They said no patronizing words as far as I know.
Other than that I don't know what you're even talking about. What comments do I have?
Haha bravo! way to ignore what I said, conveniently. But, that answers my question. You need say no more.
I'm sure he was saying good things about playstation before they laid people off, not sure of your point
He lays off ppl and shut down a studio then wants to say good things about PS, not hard to understand. He was saying good things because he worked there, of course he said good things at the company he worked for.
They all do, so I don't know what you mean.
You say that like Phil didn't just give thousands of people the axe while you stood in silence. We see your hypocrisy... We know you're mad that your box just got the Dreamcast treatment, but at least try to remain objective.
Nice wrong assumption as always. You're a funny guy though.
Where I mocked MS
https://n4g.com/comments/re...
Anything else I can shut you on? You know know first hand I'm good at that
Ps5 is a turd of a console. If it outsells the ps2 Itll be the greatest paper tiger in gaming history. All pop and no fizzle.
Also Jim Ryan by the way everyone PS2 now sold 160 million total.
Still yes ps5 is a fantastic console if the games library in it's later half follows past cycles of showing off what the true hardware capabilities are we are still yet to see it's best games.
Rockstar is going to make the console sing with GTA 6.
With Xbox floundering talk of EU stores no longer stocking the games going third party fanbase is more divided than ever and Nintendo doing its own thing even delaying (rumour) switch 2 till next year PlayStation is running seemingly unopposed I'm not sure if that's a good thing but it's the reality we are in
So should you keep staff you don't need in any other business? That's called socialism.
PlayStation Podcast returns with Pacific Drive and Helldivers 2 talk. And the gang says goodbye to an old friend.
I think Jim is getting positive send-off since on mostly on his watch xbox turned into a multiplatform machine.
More like Jim Ryan realized that saying "We've abandoned this platform" right before the holidays is a terrible way to sell hardware.
I ended up giving my vita away to a friend that went off to college. Kind of got tired of the whole lack of games thing.
I love my Vita! It's my buddy that goes to work with me, on trips with me, and sits next to me in bed.
My only sadness stems from the fact that Sony never made an Infamous game for it, would've been a great franchise for the platform.
All i can say is imagine the calibre of games on the vita if it was a Nintendo handheld.
The biggest problem of vita is the localization. Many good Japanese vita games do not have English version while many of them even have Chinese and Korean version. According to MC sales chart we can see psv sold well in japan, TGS 2015 has revealed many good vita games from 2nd and 3rd party, all sony need to do is to localize some good vita games and publish their English version in time.