Yoshida Discusses Delivering a ‘Steady Flow’ of PS4 Games

Speaking to Polygon during gamescom last week Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei  Yoshida discussed his desire to see a "steady flow" of post-release PS4 games. 

"We started preparing for the gamescom press conference after we finished E3, and at that point, we had no idea what we'd be able to announce from these smaller teams," Yoshida commented. "It was only a couple of weeks ago that I was informed by our third party teams that this was the lineup of games we had prepared. I was like, 'Oh! That's amazing'."

Many of the games Sony announced at gamescom come from indie developers and Yoshida says there's every chance they'll be successful on PS4. 

"I think it's fair to say that every game has a chance once it's released and more people have a chance to play it.

"Looking back, like last year, Journey got a lot of Game of the Year awards, competing against bigger titles like Call of Duty," he continued. "So that tells something, that even smaller titles have similar, big impact to consumers. What we're so excited about in the indie scene is the abundance of these potential, really creative people."

He says that as strong as they want the PS4's launch lineup to be it's important to balance that desire with solid post-release titles. 

"It's interesting that when we discuss the lineup and launch timing of titles, we always discuss internally with our marketing teams about strategy, about when we want these games. It's not like we're saying we have to release everything at launch or we shouldn't release everything at launch. They're also going back and forth; they want to create a larger launch lineup, but at the same time, they want to create a supply of new titles with good pace. That's a competing goal."

He adds that Sony has good relationships with third party publishers and developers. 

"I think, because we have good support from third parties, I think we should focus more on the steady flow of titles from our studios, rather than trying to get everything for the launch," Yoshida said.

All of Sony's studios are developing for PS4 with 30 games in the works internally, 18 of which are new IP. At gamescom the company confirmed that this includes unannounced titles from Naughty Dog and Sony Santa Monica. 

"The teams really want to wait until they have something that people will see and say, 'Wow,'" Yoshida said. "It's a natural desire for game development teams to wait until later in the development to unveil their titles. I agree, if we talk about some new Naughty Dog game that's coming, and show some teaser movie or something, people might like it —but that might not be the best presentation of the game they're actually developing for PS4.