Making video games enjoyed by millions of people around the world can cost companies huge sums of money. The new statements made by Shuhei Yoshida, the former boss of PlayStation, also reveal the difficulty and cost of making big games.
Yoshida, who was the chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment, which had successful works such as God of War and The Last of Us from 2008 to 2019, spoke in an interview published by The Guardian on Monday. The former president stated that some games have not seen the light of day in order to save developers from being stuck on a project.
PlayStation is canceling many games it thinks will fail to avoid bothering developers
Yoshida left his position in 2019 and was replaced by former Guerilla Games boss Herman Lust. However, the famous businessman continued to take part in the games developed in Sony and the company’s studios, although not in the first place. As part of this process, he stated in his new statements that a lot of games were canceled in order to focus on more potential games.
“PlayStation embraces many ideas, but most of them fail,” said the former PS President. We develop a prototype and evaluate it. Then we decide whether we should spend more time and resources. We’re also canceling a lot of games. I usually try to convince developers that I’m trying to free them from getting stuck on a project,” he said, adding that he’s trying to “save” studios and developers from working on games that won’t be successful.
Game development costs have skyrocketed in recent years, making it harder for companies to take risks
On the other hand, it was noted that the cost and difficulty of developing big games have increased significantly in recent years. For example, God of War III, a AAA game released in 2010, cost Sony $44 million. However, God of War: Ragnarök, which debuted in 2022, revealed this change, costing the company $200 million.
Naturally, with prices so high, it becomes much more risky for companies to undertake some projects that have the potential to be unsuccessful. While game cancellations upset those involved, they can generally save studios, publishers, and developers a lot of expense, hassle, and future criticism.
Despite this, Yoshida emphasizes that he wants developers in the industry to continue taking risks for their creative projects, not wanting “live-service” games like Fortnite to dominate: “I hope they continue to support and chase creative ideas and people working on new things. You don’t want the same productions that make the ‘Top 10 Games’ lists every year. I think that would be a little annoying.”
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