Sony's Yoshida has advice for Japanese developers: Do what you do best
Speaking last night with veteran developer and PlayStation 4 architect Mark Cerny, the head of Sony's Worldwide Studios looked back at his career and shared insights.
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"They should really focus on what they do best. Many games try to appease Western audiences, not understanding the culture, and most of them fail."
- Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony's Worldwide Studios. Over the course of the last generation, many Japanese studios rushed to chase the tastes of Western developers and try to capture large audiences, as the console market in their home territory dwindled. According to Shuhei Yoshida -- who spoke, last night, at Mountain View's Computer History Museum in conversation with PlayStation 4 system architect and veteran game developer Mark Cerny -- they should instead focus on what they do best. The quote comes in a report from Re/code's Eric Johnson, who attended the talk. It's increasingly being accepted across the industry here and in Japan that this is the case, but it's interesting to hear it from a Japanese native and Sony veteran (he executive-produced the original Gran Turismo, after all, and has been at the company since 1993.) Gamasutra has been informed that the conversation between Yoshida and Cerny has been recorded and will be posted online, and we'll bring you the video at the time. For now, you can read Re/code's report, which contains some fascinating tidbits of PlayStation history.
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