Shuhei Yoshida evaluation thread

Forgive my ignorance, but why are some comparing Yosh to Spencer? Aren't their jobs different?

If he's the one responsible for me getting Bloodborne, No Man's Sky, Tomorrow's Children, etc. then he's doing alright in my book.
 
I love shu. He interacts with people all the time and he's a delight.

But if he is ultimately the one who let Killzone, Knack, Infamous and Driveclub out the door as is...

Sony's decision on the PS4 hardware was brilliant. Taking a risk on 8GB of GDDR5 was bally and it worked out. #PS4NODRM is still paying off to this day.

The software and OS though, up to this point, have been disappointing. The OS I expected to be less than stellar. I expected more out of the software. Killzone, at least in my opinion, was a legitimately bad game. Infamous was gorgeous, but it was just was just not as good as 2. Driveclub has been a disaster, at least on the online side.
The 2013 output for PS3 was fan-fucking-tastic. So far the output for the PS4... it hasn't been good. I don't think the quality of output is going to stay low for long though.
 
Forgive my ignorance, but why are some comparing Yosh to Spencer? Aren't their jobs different?

If he's the one responsible for me getting Bloodborne, No Man's Sky, Tomorrow's Children, etc. then he's doing alright in my book.

They used to have the same job. Phil seemed to have sucked at it if the last 4-5 years of the Xbox 360 was anything to go by, or are we blaming Mattrick for that as well?
 
Forgive my ignorance, but why are some comparing Yosh to Spencer? Aren't their jobs different?

If he's the one responsible for me getting Bloodborne, No Man's Sky, Tomorrow's Children, etc. then he's doing alright in my book.

Third party relations got no mans sky not shu. The Tomorrow Children looks amazing.
 
Forgive my ignorance, but why are some comparing Yosh to Spencer? Aren't their jobs different?

If he's the one responsible for me getting Bloodborne, No Man's Sky, Tomorrow's Children, etc. then he's doing alright in my book.

He's responsible for TC and BB. NMS is 3rd party.

They used to have the same job. Phil seemed to have sucked at it if the last 4-5 years of the Xbox 360 was anything to go by, or are we blaming Mattrick for that as well?
Mattrick or Steve Balmer because reasons.
 
The software and OS though, up to this point, have been disappointing. The OS I expected to be less than stellar. I expected more out of the software. Killzone, at least in my opinion, was a legitimately bad game. Infamous was gorgeous, but it was just was just not as good as 2. Driveclub has been a disaster, at least on the online side.
The 2013 output for PS3 was fan-fucking-tastic. So far the output for the PS4... it hasn't been good. I don't think the quality of output is going to stay low for long though.

I didn't know Shu programmed the OS.
 
Yoshida seems like an awesome dude on Twitter that engages with fans, but he's really not that good at his job IMO.

Off the top of my head I can only think of a single successful new Sony IP launched during the "Yoshida era" (The Last of Us obviously). Pretty much everything else didn't sell well enough to justify a sequel. The successful PS3 releases of the last few years were all sequels to games that Phil Harrison greenlit (ie another Ratchet, Motostorm, Infamous, Resistance, Uncharted, LBP, GoW) rather than something Shu was responsible for.

Yoshida put out a slew of the flops like Modnation Racers, LBP Karting, MAG, Wonderbook, etc. All of the Playstation Move games were pretty much failures (to be fair those were mostly low budget shovelware, but still). PS All Stars could've potentially been a big hit but didn't sell well either and even had the planned DLC canceled. Eat Sleep Play (Twisted Metal) and Lightbox (Starhawk) both had multi-year/multi-game contracts but are now making iOS games instead after those titles underperformed.

Vita was basically left for dead with minimal first party support and the few teams that did ship a Vita game (Zipper and Liverpool) were shut down immediately afterwards.

The Japan side of things seems completely unproductive with Gran Turismo games taking forever and The Last Guardian being vaporware. Sony Bend has been MIA for 3 years since shipping UC Golden Abyss. Santa Monica was working on a new IP for 4 years before it got canned. Stuff like that points to poor management.

On the PS4 side he's been hit and miss. Killzone and Infamous seem to have sold decently but are the weakest entries in those franchises from a quality standpoint (and again, they're sequels to Phil Harrison era games). Knack was a critical and commercial flop. DriveClub seems to be a complete misfire - it was delayed a full year and is still a complete mess three weeks after launch. Planetside 2 was supposed to be a launch window game that still isn't out yet. The Order missed holiday and looks like a lame QTE-fest. 2015 is looking better for PS4, but the first party lineup has been rather underwhelming so far imo.
 
I'm one of those millions, and I've bought almost every 1st party game for PS4. I've been disappointed in Sony WWS output for some time now, and I also don't think people are buying PS4s for these games. I'm not sure what's delusional about my opinion, I'm certainly not saying that the PS4 itself is anything but a rousing success, one that I'm very happy about.



The bolded is exactly the issue to me. I don't know if Shuhei is in charge of that or what, but someone in the chain of command needs to step in and say 'We can do better here'. Of course, they did that with Driveclub and The Last Guardian and look what's happened there. Sometimes you just can't win.

Yeah Driveclub I think can be argued that there were unforeseen online issues. Its disappointing because it was already delayed a year and makes them look even worse. The Last Guardian is kinda unprecedented. I hope they can recover, but I don't know many games that have been in development hell that struggle to find the 'fun' end up magically finding that 'fun' later. I think you should know fairly early on if its fun or not. If its a technical issue, then that also makes them look bad too because its been 8 years. Either way I remain skeptical. Also why is Fumito Ueda not working on the project anymore? Sounds as though there were differences between Sony and him.

The way I see Shu is that he gives free reins to the developers so that they can do their best work and not restrain their creativity but I think it can also backfire if the game doesn't turn out so well. Either way, I'm only critiquing him for this year.
 
When did so many people turn on inFamous? I know a few have expressed disappointment in the amount of content before but I've never seen it listed as a failure as much as this thread. Both Second Son and First Light are some of my favorite games from this year. I get why KZSF, Knack, and DriveClub are listed but the inFamous games were great. Best combat in the series and the exclusives I think most lived up to the pedigree of the series and Sony WWS.
 
When did so many people turn on inFamous? I know a few have expressed disappointment in the amount of content before but I've never seen it listed as a failure as much as this thread. Both Second Son and First Light are some of my favorite games from this year.

Turning on Infamous furthers their agenda.
 
When did so many people turn on inFamous? I know a few have expressed disappointment in the amount of content before but I've never seen it listed as a failure as much as this thread. Both Second Son and First Light are some of my favorite games from this year.

I don't know I thought it was great and it has a MC of 80 so it's generally well received. Disappointment that it scored lower the the other two gamers and using that as a argument against the game was fucking stupid.
 
Yoshida seems like an awesome dude on Twitter that engages with fans, but he's really not that good at his job IMO.

Off the top of my head I can only think of a single successful new Sony IP launched during the "Yoshida era" (The Last of Us obviously). Pretty much everything else didn't sell well enough to justify a sequel. The successful PS3 releases of the last few years were all sequels to games that Phil Harrison greenlit (ie another Ratchet, Motostorm, Infamous, Resistance, Uncharted, LBP, GoW) rather than something Shu was responsible for.

Yoshida put out a slew of the flops like Modnation Racers, LBP Karting, MAG, Wonderbook, etc. All of the Playstation Move games were pretty much failures (to be fair those were mostly low budget shovelware, but still). PS All Stars could've potentially been a big hit but didn't sell well either and even had the planned DLC canceled. Eat Sleep Play (Twisted Metal) and Lightbox (Starhawk) both had multi-year/multi-game contracts but are now making iOS games instead after those titles underperformed.

Vita was basically left for dead with minimal first party support and the few teams that did ship a Vita game (Zipper and Liverpool) were shut down immediately afterwards.

The Japan side of things seems completely unproductive with Gran Turismo games taking forever and The Last Guardian being vaporware. Sony Bend has been MIA for 3 years since shipping UC Golden Abyss. Santa Monica was working on a new IP for 4 years before it got canned. Stuff like that points to poor management.

On the PS4 side he's been hit and miss. Killzone and Infamous seem to have sold decently but are the weakest entries in those franchises from a quality standpoint (and again, they're sequels to Phil Harrison era games). Knack was a critical and commercial flop. DriveClub seems to be a complete misfire - it was delayed a full year and is still a complete mess three weeks after launch. Planetside 2 was supposed to be a launch window game that still isn't out yet. The Order missed holiday and looks like a lame QTE-fest. 2015 is looking better for PS4, but the first party lineup has been rather underwhelming so far imo.

That's a a good summary, I had totally forgotten about all the bolded stuff, all absolutely crap. So many studios, so few actually great games. The difference between Sony WWS's 'hit rate' and Nintendo's is quite stunning. No reason they shouldn't be able to approach that level of quality, either. They just seem, as you say, to suffer from mismanagement.
 
That's a a good summary, I had totally forgotten about all the bolded stuff, all absolutely crap. So many studios, so few actually great games. The difference between Sony WWS's 'hit rate' and Nintendo's is quite stunning. No reason they shouldn't be able to approach that level of quality, either. They just seem, as you say, to suffer from mismanagement.

Opinions how do they work.
 
That's a a good summary, I had totally forgotten about all the bolded stuff, all absolutely crap. So many studios, so few actually great games. The difference between Sony WWS's 'hit rate' and Nintendo's is quite stunning. No reason they shouldn't be able to approach that level of quality, either. They just seem, as you say, to suffer from mismanagement.

So you're saying it's Yoshida's fault that WWS games aren't as "quality" as Nintendo's?

And the post you quoted is downplaying any titles released under Yoshida that are sequels to known franchises from before Yoshida. But Nintendo gets a pass for nonstop Mario, Zelda, Kirby, etc games? Why?

I'm not saying Mario and Zelda games aren't good. But there's a fuck ton to be said for actually attempting new IPs.
 
orochi91 is the only one i see in every sony topic hating on him.

Seems like a good dude to me. He has done a lot for the indie scene and has a great personality
 
That seems rather true at this point.

Outside of ND, SSM and MM the rest are pretty inconsistent.

Polyphony is talented. It's just unfortunate that GT6 was released on the PS3. Probably a good game, but I was done buying PS3 games after The Last of Us.

I love Sucker Punch, but I think it's time for them to move onto a different series.
 
Kind of surprised by the negativity surrounding Yoshida. You can see that he took risks by releasing all of those PS3 games. Killzone & Knack turned out to be disappointments, Driveclub got delayed a year and still wasn't ready but couldn't really be delayed again because SSM's new IP was canceled and The Order was delayed.

Everything seems to be on track for 2015 and beyond. The lineup is stacked even though Bend, London Studio, GG, and MM haven't announced their new AAA IPs (hiring devs to create new IPs and Japanese exclusives really helps). Cambridge is back to making a console game (I really hope this isn't Killzone), Gravity Rush is likely to get another chance to live on PS4 (might be PS4/Vita) along with Tearaway.

Curious to see what they do at the December event. I think Bend Studio and Ono will announce their new games.
That seems rather true at this point.

Outside of ND, SSM and MM the rest are pretty inconsistent.
Sucker Punch seems to be pretty consistent outside of Second Son (haven't played the series). Sly Cooper and Infamous all scored in the upper 80's.

The rest of them really haven't put out anything on consoles (and if they have, it was casual titles). Bend's last console game was on the PS2, Cambrige's last non casual console game was on the PS2, London Studios last non-casual console game was on PS2, etc. Not sure what Japan Studio is doing but it seems like Team Gravity are the only ones doing internal games at that 400+ staff studio lol.
 
When did so many people turn on inFamous? I know a few have expressed disappointment in the amount of content before but I've never seen it listed as a failure as much as this thread. Both Second Son and First Light are some of my favorite games from this year. I get why KZSF, Knack, and DriveClub are listed but the inFamous games were great. Best combat in the series and the exclusives I think most lived up to the pedigree of the series and Sony WWS.

Because those people did not like the game, and they think them not liking a game means it was bad or it was a bad choice to make and that Shuhei should be dragged through the streets and pelted with rotten fruit for letting that happen, simply because they did not enjoy it (aside form the fact that sold well. Or in other words....

CKRuVyY.gif
 
At least most of them very good at graphic tech/art. First party game almost guarantee a looker.

True.

But I'd like my AAA exclusives to have worthwhile substance to go along with that style/presentation.

That's literally my only beef with most PS4 exclusives so far. They look great, but are mediocre in all other aspects :/
 
I think he has done a pretty poor job, for many of the reasons already stated in this thread. Seems like an unpopular opinion. Next year looks much better, however.

-Greenlighting The Order. Yeah, it's not out yet, but come on. It's shit. We can see it a mile away, and smell it from even further.
How is greenlighting the console debut of the guys who made Chains of Olympus, Daxter and Ghost of Sparta a bad move?

Either you played a 10 minute demo or you haven't played the game at all, ffs.
 
True.

But I'd like my AAA exclusives to have worthwhile substance to go along with that style/presentation.

That's literally my only beef with most PS4 exclusives so far. They look great, but are mediocre in all other aspects :/

To be fair, no publisher can consistently make 8-9 games all the time.
For every 9 game, there are couple of 6-7 games and I don't consider 6.5 - 7.5 games mediocre.

Also, I like his focus on variety and try to bring back AA titles. I know he tend to let 3rd party fill the MP space,but I hope first party can make some MP heavy fun/competitive games.
 
Hes doing great. I think all the 1st party games bring somwthing to the table. I mean, people might not like knack, kz etc. But none are on the level of Alien:CM or ride to hell.
 
Yoshida seems like an awesome dude on Twitter that engages with fans, but he's really not that good at his job IMO.

Off the top of my head I can only think of a single successful new Sony IP launched during the "Yoshida era" (The Last of Us obviously). Pretty much everything else didn't sell well enough to justify a sequel. The successful PS3 releases of the last few years were all sequels to games that Phil Harrison greenlit (ie another Ratchet, Motostorm, Infamous, Resistance, Uncharted, LBP, GoW) rather than something Shu was responsible for.

Yoshida put out a slew of the flops like Modnation Racers, LBP Karting, MAG, Wonderbook, etc. All of the Playstation Move games were pretty much failures (to be fair those were mostly low budget shovelware, but still). PS All Stars could've potentially been a big hit but didn't sell well either and even had the planned DLC canceled. Eat Sleep Play (Twisted Metal) and Lightbox (Starhawk) both had multi-year/multi-game contracts but are now making iOS games instead after those titles underperformed.

Vita was basically left for dead with minimal first party support and the few teams that did ship a Vita game (Zipper and Liverpool) were shut down immediately afterwards.

The Japan side of things seems completely unproductive with Gran Turismo games taking forever and The Last Guardian being vaporware. Sony Bend has been MIA for 3 years since shipping UC Golden Abyss. Santa Monica was working on a new IP for 4 years before it got canned. Stuff like that points to poor management.

On the PS4 side he's been hit and miss. Killzone and Infamous seem to have sold decently but are the weakest entries in those franchises from a quality standpoint (and again, they're sequels to Phil Harrison era games). Knack was a critical and commercial flop. DriveClub seems to be a complete misfire - it was delayed a full year and is still a complete mess three weeks after launch. Planetside 2 was supposed to be a launch window game that still isn't out yet. The Order missed holiday and looks like a lame QTE-fest. 2015 is looking better for PS4, but the first party lineup has been rather underwhelming so far imo.


Couldn't agree more.
 
Absolutely terrible. It shows the guy has no experience making games and he does nothing to coax the best out of the studios under his wing. He is more of an accountant. The sooner he steps aside and lets someone competent take over the better.
 
I think he has done a pretty poor job, for many of the reasons already stated in this thread. Seems like an unpopular opinion. Next year looks much better, however.

-Gravity Rush 2 disappearing.
-Greenlighting The Order. Yeah, it's not out yet, but come on. It's shit. We can see it a mile away, and smell it from even further.
How has GR2 disappeared? I'll never get this attitude. The issue is that GR2 was shown too early. Not that it's disappeared. They should have just never shown us anything because it's clearly a work in progress. At best, it was at mere "concept" level when they showed it to us last.

And please, tell me more about how "shit" a game we all haven't played is. Have you played the demo? I'd love to know your thoughts since you seem so comfortable judging a game that's not out yet and generalizing your opinions to everyone else!
 
My comments in bold:

I think he has done a pretty poor job, for many of the reasons already stated in this thread. Seems like an unpopular opinion. Next year looks much better, however.

Some quick reasons:
-Killing Studio Liverpool. Talented studio that could have done something else. Yet they didn't do anything else, even though they tried for years and years. I mean really, do you think they spent 4 years developing Wipeout 2048? I thought it was pretty shitty when Psygnosis was closed but sadly, the writing was on the wall.
-General poor quality of PS4 launch games. I haven't played Killzone or Knack, so I can't really comment on those but Resogun was poor?
-The Driveclub fiasco, including the delay, the PS+ delay, the online issues, and greenlighting Driveclub instead of a more interesting game that would be further away from GT6/GT7 and thus an IP that wouldn't compete in-house. How exactly do you judge whether a game is "interesting" before it's even greenlit? And while those other issues are shitty, what the fuck does it have to do with Shu? Was he meant to micromanage Evolution throughout the entire development cycle to ensure they didn't make any mistakes? Ridiculous.
-General mediocre quality of many 1st party releases over the last 3 years. I agree some of their games have been mediocre but why are you saying this and yet not listing the great games they've listed in the positives? Journey, Tearaway, Tokyo Jungle, Killzone Mercenary and Sly 4 all came out in the last 3 years too and they weren't developed by Naughty Dog either.
-Unmarketability of many releases over the last three years - games like Tearaway or Puppeteer that were sent to die. What? Are you complaining about the marketing, which Shu had zero involvement in, or that those games were impossible to market, which strikes me as a ridiculous thing to say.
-Not getting GT6 and some late PS3 games on the PS4 where they were needed; generally allowing PD to fuck about. If those games had been on the PS4 from the beginning, they wouldn't have come out last year in the first place, adding another couple of years to development time and dramatically increasing their budgets. I mean really, do you really think any of those studios would've just thrown those games out straight onto the PS4 without taking advantage of the hardware? Especially Polyphony Digital and Sony Santa Monica, of all studios. Also, how the fuck did he "allow" PD to fuck about? Dumb complaint.
-Failure to come up with a killer app or decent slate of first party games for Vita, even if in the end he made the right call to stop supporting it with 'AAA' games. If coming up with a killer app were so easy, the Wii U would be unstoppable, what a ridiculous complaint. And they did have a decent slate of first party games for the Vita, few of which actually sold well enough to justify even more games.
-The Last Guardian Saga What exactly should he have done? Rush it out? Cancel it? It's a highly anticipated game, doing so probably would've saved some money but also led to a shitstorm (see: earlier this year).
-Gravity Rush 2 disappearing. So? It's been gone for one year and we know it's still in development, do they really need to give us constant updates?
-Greenlighting The Order. Yeah, it's not out yet, but come on. It's shit. We can see it a mile away, and smell it from even further. Oh fuck off, what an idiotic thing to say.
-Infamous is a super-generic series at this point, Second Son was disappointing. I liked it. Opinions opinions olol.

Obviously there are good things too:
-Naughty Dog's continued performance.
-MLB the show is the best exclusive sports game around, and he continues to let that team do their thing. It's the ONLY exclusive sports game around...
-His embrace of indies (if he's responsible for that). He's responsible for embracing small studios like Housemarque (Resogun, Stardust, etc), Q-Games (Tomorrow Children), Tequila Works (Rime), etc. as part of their first party lineup. But indies are third party relations territory.
-Getting Bloodborne on PS4

In general I think Sony WWS's games are far more underwhelming than they should be, and I often don't like them. Sony should be able to do better than the likes of the Killzone series, which is just mediocre trash - less than mediocre in the case of Shadow Fall. If you consider Shuhei responsible for all these first party games, then I'm not a huge fan, to be honest.

EDIT: If you're asking me if I like the guy, then I think he's a AAA bloke.

On another note, I have to laugh at Sean's post giving credit for GoW and R&C to Phil Harrison, even though Shu had more to do with those franchises than Phil ever did (Senior VP of Product Development at SCEA before SCEWWS was created, so I'm pretty sure he greenlit God of War 1). Meanwhile, MAG is apparently a Shu game, even though it was greenlit while Phil Harrison was running WWS (Modnation Racers might have been as well, I'm not sure).

I predict that at this time next year, a lot of people will be singing a different tune. It's been an unlucky down year for Sony but I've no doubt they'll bounce back.
 
SCEWWS did not exist before mid-2005. Before that,every product was regionally developed without much consideration of the global market.

So, yeah.
 
He's doing amazingly on a shoestring. I thought Wii was gonna be the winning unit of its generation with the most absymal overall support of all time, the only reason PS4 could end up not outdoing Wii is third parties, and only barely since nearly all of them are multiplatform.
 
How has GR2 disappeared? I'll never get this attitude. The issue is that GR2 was shown too early. Not that it's disappeared. They should have just never shown us anything because it's clearly a work in progress. At best, it was at mere "concept" level when they showed it to us last.

And please, tell me more about how "shit" a game we all haven't played is. Have you played the demo? I'd love to know your thoughts since you seem so comfortable judging a game that's not out yet and generalizing your opinions to everyone else!

How is greenlighting the console debut of the guys who made Chains of Olympus, Daxter and Ghost of Sparta a bad move?

Either you played a 10 minute demo or you haven't played the game at all, ffs.

I have always been very comfortable judging games before they're out, I find that when it comes to AAA titles I'm usually right about what my final opinion will be before the thing is released. Games aren't movies or books, where the narrative IS the product and can change or get better as the thing progresses. If the core gameplay loop of a game looks bad, then the game will most likely be bad and continue to be bad. The Order's gameplay looks bad. It will most likely be bad.

I'm struggling to think of a game that looked terrible in trailers that ended up being good and I'm drawing a blank here.
 
That's a a good summary, I had totally forgotten about all the bolded stuff, all absolutely crap. So many studios, so few actually great games. The difference between Sony WWS's 'hit rate' and Nintendo's is quite stunning. No reason they shouldn't be able to approach that level of quality, either. They just seem, as you say, to suffer from mismanagement.
It's not Shu's fault the games don't hit Nintendo quality. We can blame the development teams for that.

I love Shu and he is great at what he does, but I do feel like this is their worst holiday season in a long time, perhaps ever. Next year does look really good though, in my opinion far better than what Microsoft has planned, so there's that.
 
Mine too.
And I don't care if the PS Vita is not selling well. Look at Nintendo : they are supporting the WiiU even if it sells poorly.

On PS3 and PS4 he's doing a very good job.

So you think that dropping support for a handheld is equivalent to dropping support for the flagship console?
 
So you think that dropping support for a handheld is equivalent to dropping support for the flagship console?

Yes. PSP had far less support but it's lifetime still did around the same amount of what the PS3 did worldwide in some countries like Japan, was even greater. I don't see how that isn't considered a flagship device. Both WiiU and Vita had successful predecessors but are failing due to the changes in the market and their own failures yet Nintendo is still supporting their device far better.
 
Forgive my ignorance, but why are some comparing Yosh to Spencer? Aren't their jobs different?

If he's the one responsible for me getting Bloodborne, No Man's Sky, Tomorrow's Children, etc. then he's doing alright in my book.

Well, until recently when Spencer got promoted to head of Xbox, they pretty much had the same job.
 
Sony WWS have been a bit of a trainwreck outside of Naughty Dog (SCEJ is still a mess, Infamous was half baked, The Order looks like a waste of everyones time, Polyphony are off in their own little bubble, Insomniac flew the coop, Santa Monica Studio is a wasteland AND then there is the hot mess that is DriveClub) BUT he says funny things on twitter so he is ok in my book.

Exactly this. Except I don't care for his twitter stuff.
 
Top Bottom