Former PlayStation Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida says he shut down 2 games “in deep production” after Sony had spent $25 million on them: “At that time, that was lots of money”

Having worked as a highly productive producer at PlayStation since the inception of the brand and later transitioning to the role of president of what is now PlayStation Studios, Shuhei Yoshida is well-versed in approving successful video games. Now that he has left PlayStation to pursue his consultancy firm, he is revealing insights into what occurs when a game is not necessarily regarded as successful.

“In the worst-case scenario, we typically assess how much additional funding we need to invest to complete this game,” Yoshida explains in an interview with Game File (paywalled). “If the anticipated revenue falls below the expenses required to finalize it, we terminate the project. We have scrapped numerous projects right after the prototype stage, and the public is mostly unaware of this. That’s perfectly acceptable. It’s just a part of the process, isn’t it?”

However, while prototype projects do get canceled frequently – a recently discovered PSP proposal serves as a significant example – at times, a game is in full production before it becomes evident that it is not financially viable. “Occasionally, the game is in advanced production,” Yoshida notes. “The most substantial cancelations I oversaw were two games after we had already invested $25 million. Back then, that was a substantial amount of money. Now, it’s not as significant. I felt genuinely bad that we couldn’t recognize this earlier.”

I would love to find out which two games Yoshida refers to, but he does not disclose any details – evidently, they must be older projects if $25 million was considered a large sum “at that time.” Nonetheless, given the plethora of successful titles that emerged from Sony‘s first-party development team over the years, it seems Yoshida was instrumental in guiding many of the beloved titles, and his input resulted in critical decisions like a notable delay for God of War.

“I have always believed that [the reason] I managed to collaborate effectively with developers and studios was because I understand that I cannot create games myself,” Yoshida adds. “I produced, so I was quite demanding with producers. That was my role, but apart from production… I held great respect for artists, programmers, and all other roles involved.”