Why Trends Can Be Deadly for Indie Developers, According to Ex-Sony Boss Yoshida

Shuhei Yoshida played an integral role at Sony Interactive Entertainment for over two decades.

The former head of PlayStation Studios (then known as Sony Worldwide Studios) helped develop the biggest IPs in the PlayStation library today.

“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,” he said at the recent ALT: GAMES festival in Australia. He also adds that he was fired from leading the company's first-party development, which is ludicrous to think about.

“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.'” While you can argue that Yoshida says the comment in jest, Jim Ryan has been a leading charge behind Sony's live service push as of late.

Yoshida then transitioned to a role focused more on "nurturing external independent creators" before leaving the company in 2025. He has since formed his own consulting firm, Yosp Inc., focusing on indie games. Here's how he describes it:

I was helping indie publishers and developers at Sony for the last five years, so I feel like I’m continuing to do the same kind of thing, but now I am freelance. I’m free to show up in any podcast. 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.

Here's the Advice Yoshida Gives to Indie Developers

Given his love of indie games, combined with his knowledge and expertise in the industry, when someone like Shuhei Yoshida gives advice, you tend to listen.

He used his talk to do just that for up-and-coming independent developers, saying that if an indie dev is following a trend, they're already too late.

Instead, it's important to stay ahead of those trends and try something new. Yoshida did give some examples of indie standouts that buck trends and resonated with him.

• Journey and Before Your Eyes, as they made him cry
• Dead Cells and Nine Sols, as they felt good in his hands
• Inscryption and Doki Doki Literature Club, since they were not what they seemed at first glance
• Cult of the Lamb and Ball X Pit, as they did an excellent job of mixing up genres
• Viewfinder and Word Game, since they excelled at making their own rules
• Fall Guys and Marvel Snap, since you were able to feel other people as you play

Believe it or not, Yoshida had a criippling addiction to Marvel Snap. Thankfully, he's since kicked the habit, but it goes to show you the importance of indie developers going their own way.

In a way, it's ironic that the game he was most addicted to was Marvel Snap, since it's led by another developer who left a major company to form an independent studio in Ben Brode.

Brode left Blizzard in 2018 and founded Second Dinner with several other former Blizzard developers. They would release Marvel Snap in 2022.