Earlier this month PlayStation 4 lead system architect Mark Cerny spoke with Sony Computer Entertainment president Shuhei Yoshida for over an hour and a video of their chat has now appeared online.
The conversation lasted for over an hour and touches on Yoshida's background and his history with Sony Computer Entertainment. Their chat occured on April 10th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
Around 5,000 people work for SCE and about half of that number is involved in game production. That means around 2,500 people are developing for PS4 as Sony has every one of its first party studios developing for the console.
He said that through his highly prolific tweeting and the reports he receives through Twitter, Sony benefits with news of issues unknown to the company reaching him through the social site. This "actually helps us," he adds, as Yoshida then send emails to the right group within Sony responsible for the problem.
Yoshida said that while user interaction isn't his actual role, so many people tweet to him that he's basically "doing this customer service job."
Speaking about the PS3's development, Yoshida commented that he was only told three weeks before E3 2006 that the DualShock 3 had Sixaxis motion controls and needed to make a prototype for Sony's press conference which looked like it had always been intended to make use of Sixaxis.
When it came to discussing playing rival systems' games, he said it's "very productive" because it allows him to explore game design ideas. He buys two of every console – one of playing Japanese games and one for playing American games – but as Cerny notes, that's no longer needed for PlayStation consoles.
Yoshida also revealed that he was banned on Wii U twice. Once he was banned because he said "I love PS" in Wii Verse and commercial promotion is not allowed.
Once he started working with Sony, he was eventually inducted into SCE but thought PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi was a "liar" when he claimed that he could sell the first PS for under $500.
It's a fascinating interview and you can check it out in full here.
