No one likes a cancelled game, especially the developers who spent time and effort on something no one ever gets see. But, apparently, there are many more cancelled projects that we are even aware of. At least, that's what seems to indicate Shuhei Yoshida in a recent interview.
Speaking to The Guardian, the PlayStation guru revealed how there have been a lot of cancelled projects and it is a tough job that no one likes.
"PlayStation embraces new ideas, and many of them fail. We do a prototype, we evaluate, we decide whether to spend more time and resources, or we just stop,” Yoshida said. “We cancel so many games. I usually try to convince the developer that I’m trying to save them from getting stuck with this project.”
Yoshida explained how hard it is to stop people to work on projects with strong ideas and tries to help them as much as possible. The director usually follows a project from beginning to end, ever since the early prototype stages so he is the first to be aware of the hard work put in by the developers to make an idea come to life.
Among the many projects he has been behind in the years, the one he most fondly remembers Journey by thatgamecompany. A game that he mentions overcoming impossible odds and going out to win prizes against games with much bigger budgets and fame.
As the current Head of Indipendent Developer Initiative at Sony, Yoshida's actual job is following Sony's investments in development outside the usual areas of Northern America, Europe and Japan. He also comments on AI as a tool that will open up development and "dramatically reduce the costs".
While we might never see many of the projects that Yoshida was forced to cancel during the years, still we can feel safe as he still puts creativity as the most important drive in the industry. Otherwise, he concludes, "the industry would become a bit too boring".
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